August '23 Reading Round Up

 

 

Well, well, well, will you look at this: Mark Millar is saying the comic book industry is in the worst state it’s ever been. I’m not really a big Marky Millie guy what with his enormous fonts and bombastic marketing approach to his books BUT I respect his game and believe that he in fact does love making comic books, although I think he loves turning them into TV shows more. That said, his claim that the Big 2 need to hire some bad ass writers and get readers back on board is spot on. Here’s a link to his interview:

 

Mark Millar Interview 

 

Let’s face it, DC & Marvisney have become all but unreadable the past year, why? Beats me. You can just feel the ick oozing off of the pages despite the talent attached. I don’t know if some sort of demonic entity is jizzing all over the books at the printer, wouldn’t be surprised, but there’s something way off with these two major publishers. DC was at least able to knock the industry out of the park last year with its scintillating Black Label releases but this year they’ve been few and far between. I see that some ‘Batman: Gargoyle’ book is coming out in September under their Black Label imprint. It looks half decent, but is it a game changer like say, something like ‘Catwoman: Lonely City’? I doubt it.

 

Also, if you’ve been following my continued desire to completely overhaul the Marvisney comic book line for the past several months, you’ll remember that I’ve been clamoring for the Marvisney stock price to plummet with the hopes that if it falls far enough they might be inclined to sell it. Well, this week the Mouse dipped under $83 a share, it’s lowest price in 9 years. There are murmurings now that they’re going to sell off their shows, reduce the amount of Star Wars garbage that they’ve been pumping out etc. I don’t think we’re too far off from them being open to selling Marvel Entertainment to someone. If there’s a billionaire comic geek conglomerate out there, now’s the time to pounce guys!

Besides my reviews this month here's what I got into:

If there should be a new CEO of one or both of the Big 2 it should probably be Jeff Lemire. This guy oozes 'I love making comics'. His new series is another one of those grounded stories mixed with the fantastical that he's sooo good at. There's a great back story at the end on his process for imagining up the concept for this book. He even goes so far as to mention that "For $5.99 you're getting the equivalent of three regular comic issues for less than the price of two" All hail Jeffy! Oh, his 'Phantom Road' book also finished up its first arc and ended on a 'I must keep reading this immediately' hook. Lemire is the frikkin' man.

 

You know what delivers time and time again? Groo. Groo is like Conan meets Curly from the Three Stooges, it's can't miss entertainment and such a tidy perfect little escape from the world for the several minutes that it takes to fly through the exquisite detailed cartooning of Aragones. The current first ish in the most recent mini-series isn't going to upend any genre or turn the industry on its head, but hey, in this day and age Cheese Dip and Mulching beat DC & Marvisney drivel all day every day.

 

Deep Cuts is turning into a real delightful monthly vignette that I truly look forward to. The creative team really conveys the sense of the time period along with the musicality of each issue. While having these double-sized one shots that are part of an overall set of six that span six decades of Jazz is wonderful, it would be great if this opens the door for an ongoing monthly that takes up the mantle of a 'Jazz Story'. As we can see, it's such a rich untapped history with so many stories to tell. Hopefully Image can transition one of these into a monthly or at the very least inspire a new one.

 

Something Epic got back on track after a blah second issue. The emotional electricity is back in the third installment. This is fast becoming must read content by Kudranski and it feels like it's the book he was meant to write. The book that he's worked on for decades that is finally seeing the light of day. I have no idea where this is leading but I hope for Kudranski's sake and ours that it's somewhere worthy of the title he's so boldly chosen. Also, interesting to note that three of the four books I've blurbed about are all from Image. Hmm, maybe Image should do a corporate takeover of MarvisneyDC and just run the whole damn industry. I think that and then I remember the absolute debacle of Kirkman's Void Rivals and its pathetic Hasbro cross-promotion and then think otherwise.

Who should take over the comic book industry? Oh wait, Jeff Lemire, right. Jeff. Jeffy, we're gonna need you to watch 'Wall Street' on repeat for a few months straight, get in the mood for some serious boardroom bloviating. I have faith in you. 

Here's the reviews of the past month:

Monstress #45

Batman: White Knight - Generation Joker #2

Hunger & The Dusk #1

Barnstormers #1

Antarctica #1

Batman: Knight Terrors #1

Dive Marvisney Stock! DIVE!!!

MONSTRESS #45 - Review

 

  

The face that Maika makes on the cover of this comic book is the face my wallet just made after it bit deeply into my hand and tore off a piece of my flesh. It was the price I paid for clicking to pull this comic yet a-fucking-gain despite everything in my body and mind telling me not to. My wallet went absolutely berserk on me as I pulled this comic out of the plastic bag full of comics, fresh from my LCS. Had I not kicked it down the hallway along with all the cancelled/maxed out credit cards it might have torn off my arms. As it spun away, pieces of my thumb sputtering into its fake leathery teeth, it growled ‘How much more are you going to waste on this book from fucking hell! 200 buckeroos isn’t enough you degenerate! Look at you! Buy yourself a burger and leave this shite for the other poor saps who are duped into reading it!!!’ Okay, maybe my wallet didn’t actually gnash off a digit of mine nor did it come to life as if it was in a Studio Ghibli movie, but it might as well have. Jesus Christmas! Monstress! WTF???

 

I started reading the first few pages of this comic and I hit a fucking wall. I’m completely exhausted by this - I dunno, what is this, it’s not a story anymore, it’s the ramblings of a psychotic schizophrenic manic depressive ADD writer named Marjorie Liu, who’s cute as hell, but who has lost all sense of the basic construct of a plot that moves. I would imagine she has also driven her partner in crime, Sana Takeda, off a cliff. Sana probably prints out the pages of the script that Marj sends here and takes them to a group therapy session in the basement of a church somewhere. When it’s her turn to speak she just bawls and hurls the pages on the floor and wails ‘I have to draw this fucking nonsense!’. 

 

Look at this page of art. It's all static, anger, despair, the plea one of the great comic book artists of our generation

She's saying: GET ME OUT OF HERE!

 

Image is also in a bind. They would have cancelled this comic years ago but they’ve been approached by Junot Diaz, Marj’s hubby, and her team of psychotherapists who have begged Captain Kirky to keep this series afloat lest they send Marj in a suicidal tailspin, this comic being the only thing that gets her through the day. Right now Junot Diaz is in the living room of their Victorian Home in Nantucket, dressed comfortably in soft linens. He takes breaks in his chair by reclining against a cashmere throw pillow that he purchased from a former Emperor of Japan. He types the next great American novel on an old school typewriter while Bach and Chopin plays softly in the background. A Maine Coon purrs at his ankles and a ceremonial matcha latte with macadamia milk wafts wisps of smoke above his mug made from upcycled broken plates from a chateau in Normandy where Lord Byron would write.

 

Marjorie, on the other hand, is up in the attic, naked, shvitzing, grunting, narrowing her eyes at her laptop screen, a screen that she has scraped with her fingernails over and over. Three dozen cats wander about. They whinge and take turns landing on her tousled head as she pumps out a new issue of her avant garde psychedelic mind fuck of a book with no plot. Goldfrapp is on repeat as the thundering bass vibrates her fingers. Fingers that tap out pure and utter lunacy to be read by, me? I don’t think anyone is reading this book anymore.

 

Am I the only who is reading this comic? It feels like I’m the only one. Anybody out there reading Monstress? Is it just me? It’s just me isn’t it. I never see any back issues of this book in my comic book shop, Lord knows this ain’t selling out. Maybe I am the only thing that’s keeping this book afloat. Maybe if I drop it from my pull, Image will call Marj that her lone customer of her book is no more. Marjorie would drop to the floor from her Arne Jacobsen chair and screech until Juno rushed upstairs with an Igloo Cooler full of meds for the moment that he knew was coming.

 

I mean, listen to the recap of this comic that’s written on the inside of the cover:

 

From the astral plane, Maika Halfwolf and her friends and allies [etc] and the ghost of her child self jumped through a portal [through a fucking cat statue in space] and landed in the most unexpected of places [wouldn't the head of the floating cat statue be more of an unexpected place?] Golga, the planet where the Monstra have long been imprisoned [etc] Elsewhere, Ren had stumbled upon a hidden clan of cats [umm what?] with unknown motives [are the motives of cats ever fucking known?] and the ghost of young Maika has been lured away by the Smith Singer [Wait, is Morrissey involved in this now???] a mysterious Monstrum [who sings like Morrissey?] etc.

 

Hasn't it been scientifically proven that having or living with cats makes you certifiably crazy. Like they emit some sort of spore or have certain types of parasites that get into your brain and make you lose your marbles over time? 

 

Am I being too hard on Marjorie? Isn't this still a great book with eye popping art? So what if she's veered off into some outer space inter dimensional prison colony? Maybe Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor will make an appearance! I'll tell you what this is like. Ted Lasso, final season, okay? Remember they had that one episode where they followed Beard on a wild and crazy night throughout London? Through bars and clubs and underground raves with a bunch of crazy characters? It was his episode. Now imagine this, rather than just doing a one off 'Beard' episode they decided to follow Beard's hijinks for another 6-8 episodes straight. Like, he just continued on this crazy journey away from the team. You'd be like, wait a minute, what the fuck? Is this the show now? What happened to Ted's anxiety? When do I get to look at Keely's boobies again and hear Roy Kent tell everyone to fuck off? That's what's happening here. Rather than following the Seaweed God for an issue or so we're stuck in an entirely new world of Seaweed Gods for who knows how long and we've lost the entire connection to the main storyline.

 

I think, we’re at the point in this comic book relationship, that started almost eight frikkin’ years ago, where it’s time to have ‘The Talk’. Of course, I’d be the asshole in this talk because I’d be wanting to wantonly abandon a psychotic deranged miscreant who’s in dire need of love and a credit to the UCLA Writing Program. I should ‘stick it out’ with this book and weather the storm of ‘holy bejeezus what the hell is going the fuck on here’ that has been pelting my eyes with its hailstones for the past several years. When you’ve invested so much, as my wallet would attest, it’s hard to just break it off like a cheap piece of drivel from someone like Kevin Smith, where it’s easy to use his pages as a pee pad for incontinent doggies.

 

I keep looking at the solicits and, fuck, there’s at least another 4 books after this one with no end in sight. I want to read ‘Finale’ in one of the solicits! I want to see an article on aiptcomics.com that details how Marjorie is going to be ending her Monstress run and will be joining Marvisney to write a new arc of She Hulk where Jen takes Ayahuasca and hunts down Bob Iger. Marjorie’s Twitter/Insta hasn’t been updated in almost 4 years! Is this even Marj??? Do we have another AI situation here? I hope so. 

 

I hope that Boston Dynamics’ War Dogs broke into her home and abducted her back in 2019/2020. It would make me feel so much better knowing that the powers that be couldn’t have a beautiful comic such as this exist in the world. Maybe when the AI took over that’s when all these ‘War Arcs’ began which bored me to tears. It’s also the only explanation for how we’re on a prison planet of seaweed Gods that was accessed through the belly of a Cat Monolith in outer space.

 

I feel like I'm at the beginning of a Black Mirror episode where I'm reading this bonkers comic and all of a sudden these wackadoodle seaweed Gods start appearing all over Los Angeles. I'll run outside and point and nobody will see them but me (since I'm the only one who ever read the comic book). A Cat Monolith will then appear and hover over Whole Foods. It will suck me into its belly along with the eggs, hummus, bananas and bag of oatmeal that I bought for $134.

I'll end up on a Prison Planet with the rest of the 11 other comic book readers who were actually reading this book. One by one the Digital Pen of Sana Takeda will appear out of the sky and we'll all be transformed by that pen into Seaweed Gods. We'll wander the skies of other dimensions where Monstress Comics exist waiting for the moment when Marjorie Liu will appear to us. We'll chase her from one world to the next, jumping through Space Cat Bellies and Space Cat Anuses and Space Cat Litter Boxes. Miley Cyrus will join us and she'll sing an AutoTune anthem called 'Seaweed Ball' as we jump through these Cosmic Felines. 

We'll end up as seaweed balls on an elongated dish at a Sushi Restaurant where the Sushi Chefs are Boston Dynamics War Dogs. Headless Riot Grrrls with Bangs will eat us one by one and the episode will end.

 

And I've officially gone Monstress Crazy. Where's Juno with my Meds? Wait, I don't take Meds. Where's Juno with my Monstress Intervention!

 

Rating: 6.1

Verdict: Pull and Pray 

BATMAN. WHITE KNIGHT: GENERATION JOKER #2 - Review

 

For the record I began reading this comic over a month ago but after I saw the first couple of pages I got so incensed and unruly that I needed to put it down and walk away for a bit. What an absolute fucking debacle the first page was. Are you kidding me? Dude, like, get Murphy back on this, stat! I wanna see Murph throw on some kicks and bust a move over to wherever the hell this Clay McDoobedyboobedy is and knock a sucka out. Knock him out Moiph! I’ve had it! My beloved White Knight now a Pudgy Beige Pawn. For all that is good and holy guacamole in the comic book galaxy can you please wipe away the stankity stank stank that has been smeared on the greatest alternative Bat Universe that has ever been created?

 

Sean, look, clearly this ridiculous attempt to be a White Knight book isn’t your wonderful wife’s fault. I can see it now. You two were tenderly holding each other in bed in the morning chatting about all good things, maybe I should do this, maybe you should do that. You both came up with an idea about a new White Knight story. Murph said ‘I got you Baby’ made a phone call to DC, they were like, ‘Sounds amazing send Katana in!’ She hopped in her whip and coasted over to Burbank, headed upstairs, met with some suits. They were down but then – then, one of them said:

 

Suit: Hey you know who would be great on this? My nephew Clay!

 

Katana: Oh, uh, yeah, he just, umm, Red Hood thing? Uh, I don’t -

 

Suit: Hey, Regina, can you send Clay in here?

 

[Clay walks in, he’s wearing jorts, flip flops, a retro Chewbacca t-shirt one size too short and a red tinted visor]

 

Suit: Clay, Katana has a great idea for a story about Hologaphic Joker’s kids.

 

Clay: Bagga Boogah Bagga Boogah Shmoogah

 

Suit: I know, it’s great, let’s hook you two up and get this story crack-a-lackin'!

 

That’s how an innocent lovely idea birthed from the Egyptian Cotton sheets of Murphy and Collins turned into a rotting turnip of a comic. What did he do? What happened on that first page that sent me in a tailspin?

 

Okay, ready for this, the cliffhanger from the first issue is that Scarface’s kid had the Holographic Joker and his kids surrounded by a bunch of other, I dunno, Actors maybe, with puppets. Here, look:

 

 

Totally a Batman 66 vibe, but, whatever. So the second issue starts and they’ve already escaped the circle! Like they went from being surrounded by psychotic ventriloquists to climbing a ladder! HOW THE FUCK DID THEY GET THERE CLAY MCNUMBNUTS??? Did Katana have a great idea and at the last minute you called the guy you buy your meth from at the printer and told him to delete the panels, just because? Look at this:

 

 

What happened? How did they get from being surrounded by the Mistress of Puppets and some avante garde lower east side actors/puppeteers to climbing a ladder to freedom! This is a joke right? It’s like if James Bond was tied to a table and the buzzsaw was heading for his nuts and the filmmakers then cut to him punching out the baddie with no action sequence of him escaping. It’s like Luke, Han, Chewie and Leia in the trash compactor one moment and then, boom! They’re running down a corridor talking to Alec Guinness’ floating head. Dude!

 

Real quick, I love that there’s like 5 Actors in full black get-ups operating the other puppets. What a casting call that would have been! I would have loved to audition for Creepy Second Rate Villain Accomplice #3. It would’ve been Non Union but you would’ve gotten: Free Meals, Uber reimbursed, IMDB credit, Free black spandex onesie.

 

So the Kids escape, send HoloJoke back into a hard drive and then are beset upon by the Joker’s gang in a cemetery where his tombstone rests. Clay really did that? Yes he did. It’s a Gang in a cemetery! Oh fer goodness sake. We have veered off into total Scooby Doo vibes. Yes. That is exactly what the Jokers Motorcycle Gang would be doing. They’d drive their motorcycles into a cemetery and just hang out there for no reason whatsoever. They wouldn’t be robbing anything or doing flash mobs or selling fentanyl at Coney Island on the cheap, of course not. One bald headed insane clown posse looking nitwit would say:

 

‘Hey, why don’t we take our cycles to the cemetery and weave between the headstones and just sit there with no booze or drugs until Fred, Velma, Daphne and Shaggy show up.’

 

Who is this Clay MickShaNaNaDammaLammaDingleberryDong anyway? His Twatter/X bio says he’s a “barstool intellectual w/a masters degree in small talk”. I’ll pay $20 for any Hacker who can get in there and change it to a masters degree in poor plot development, dumb AF cliffhanger follow ups and owning his McSchnookieDookie nickname. I’ll Venmo you, no questions asked. Here, this is him:

 

Look, Clay, I’m sure you’re actually a wonderful guy and that you love comics, I’m sure you do. But, Dude, you’re killing me. At the back of this issue there’s bit where each writer is asked what inspired this story for them. Katana regales us with a lovely answer of how road trips have been an intricate part of her and Sean’s life, how they’ve bonded and become closer because of them. She then says that she and Sean were watching ‘Onward’ a film about  two brothers who "embark on a magical quest to spend one more day with their late father". Wow, that sounds a lot like what’s going on in this series doesn’t it? The Joker Kids, wanting to know their dad, embark on a trip through his Gotham haunts. Solid AF Premise.

 

What does Clay answer as his inspiration to this series? Guess.

 

Thelma & Louise.

 

 

Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking of as well! The film about a couple of friends who are on the run from the law because one of them shot and killed a guy who was trying to rape one of them is an identical match to a fictional villain's kids wanting to get to know their father in an alternative universe of that fictional villain. I suppose the kiddies and HoloJoker ride their Batmobile off a bridge in Gotham in the final issue, is that what happens? Oy to the Vey.

Welp, I'm down to zero Bat Books on my pull, again. Seems impossible what with 1,532 Bat Titles on the solicits but that's where I've ended up. What the hell is going on with Black Label??? Last year they were pumping out genius book after genius book now it's a slow trickle. Generation Joker doesn't even feel like Black Label at all, it's more like a Walmart label, the kind of thing you'd find in the magazine section there that was made specifically for parents to buy for their kids when they didn't want to splurge on a $50 video game, 'Here, take this cheap comic book instead and I'll get you some chicken nuggets after we check out'.

Gotta go. I'm gonna walk up over to Wilshire Blvd and wait until I see Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis ride by in a convertible so I can toss this in their back seat.

Rating: 3.1

Verdict: Drop

The Hunger and the Dusk #1 - Review

 

I’m all for a good fantasy epic. Can’t think of any recently in the Comic Book Universe that blew me away out of my La-Z-Boy. Saga doesn’t count. Saga is its own genre. It’s not even a comic book, Saga is a cultural tattoo that won’t ever be laser removed. All Hail Saga. If someone ever asks you if you’re MAGA don't get upset, just tell them that you’re Saga and then walk away, that’ll short their circuitry for a bit. There’s also the Monstress fantasy epic, which is also a whole maddening universe unto itself that I’m unable to peel my eyes away from despite it veering off into wackadoodleville the past year. The penultimate LOTR-esque fantasy epic (and by that I mean one that utilizes the basic DNA of the whole Elven, Dwarven, Wizard construct) has got to be Elf Quest from back in the 80s and 90s. That book ruled the fantasy epic roost for quite some time. It’s recent reboot offering? Not so much. But those Epic/Marvel comics from back in the day are pure gold.

 

When I saw this Hungry Elon Musk book on the solicits I thought, seems promising. Then all the review geeks seriously geeked the fuck out over this book, gushing and fawning over Willow and Co. Dude. I mean, I really don’t understand the oohing and ahhing that everyone has been doing over this series so far. I mean, it’s good, it’s not holy guacamole good. For IDW (I Don’t Want) it’s definitely a win. The art and colors are absolutely fantastic. The story? Mnyeh. That’s Jewish for: Mnyeh. Say it out loud and inflect up at the end. Now you feel what I feel about this book.

 

The first major gripe of this comic has to be the Orcs. So, the whole premise is that Humans and their mortal enemies ‘The Orcs’ have to join forces to fight against this new blur of an enemy. I’m already a little skittish about this premise after Kirkman’s ‘Void Rival’ Sci-Fi/Hasbro debacle that utilized a similar trope. Anyway, look, these Orcs don’t look like Orcs to me at all. These are Burly/Tribal Elves at best. It’s way easier to root for husky elves and humans teaming up than the uggams we’re used to seeing. This is an Orc okay:

 

 

 

This is an Orc:

 

 

I don’t know what the hell this is:

 

That’s Michael B Jordan painted green with a couple of Woolly Mammoth teeth in his mouth.

 

Okay, and this, is the female lead of this book. This is not an Orc:

 

 

 

Seriously? I’m pretty sure this chick just me asked if I wanted Oat or Almond Milk in my Latte last week when I was meeting someone over in Echo Park/Hipsterville. Cutie! Oh, it gets worse.

 

The lead Female Orc’s nickname is Tara. Tara. I think I just swiped right on Tara. She likes checking out new restaurants, is into Zero 7, is looking for a relationship and is down for a hike or a coffee to see if things click. Oh, and also, she’ll chop your stuff off is she feels threatened. Tara! I dated a Tara once many many moons ago. She was from Texas, cute Blonde. When we got into our first fight I’m pretty sure she was running around her apartment looking for her firearm so I bolted. Yeah, Tara’s are no joke – as Humans. Tara’s as Orcs are, umm, silly? Here’s what the Chief Orc Dude looks like:

 

 

Nice, handsome, Native American vibe, right? Look, you may think I’m blowing this out of proportion but if the entire premise is based off of two sworn mortal enemies who hate each other joining forces and one looks like they’ve just returned from Burning Man, then, yeah, not so good.

 

Next, don’t wanna spoil this too much, but let’s just say the enemy that is the reason the Humans and Orcs join forces to begin with is quite the formidable opponent in the beginning of the book. It easily obliterates everyone at the top of the issue by appearing as nothing but a blur. One moment a group of Orcs is riding on horses the next they’re dead and the horses heads are rolling down the hill. But then when it comes to our ‘heroes’ they appear and we see what they look like. Now they’re like “Look at us, we’re about to hurt you”. I was almost expecting a James Bond villain speech. Umm Willow, bubbele, either they’re blurs or they’re not, pick one. There’s even a moment where one is about to behead Tara and pauses long enough so that our Human hero can save her with his shield. Oy vey.

 

I skipped ahead and looked at the solicits for the next couple of issues and it looks like our Human falls for the Orc, saw that coming a mile away. We can love anyone, no matter their looks, no matter their background, no matter if they make shitty cappuccinos and have way too many cats. Next we’ll have to have Orcs fairly represented in all of our entertainment. I can’t wait to see Orcs complaining on ‘The View’ how they’re being discriminated against and have only been cast in one Marvel and Star Wars movie so far. Then you’re gonna see White Dude/Orc couples in every commercial on TV and BestBuy is going to update their hiring manual to say ‘Hire Orcs only’. Even as I type this someone is chomping at the bit to comment and call me Orcphobic. Fun times!

 

Recap, the comic is perfectly fine, a good but not great fantasy book. I was leaning towards pulling the next few issues but after coming back from my Little Princess walk around the neighborhood I’ve had a change of heart. I was going to pull the next issues based on looks alone but we all know what happens when all you focus on is looks, don’t we? No? Well, you end up swiping right on Tara the Orc who meets you for a hike and drags you off into the brush and chops your hands off after you tell her you think her 9 inch nose rings seem a little over the top. Wow, look at that, Target has already cast Orcs in their back to school fashion commercials. Wait, those aren’t Orcs, those are fucking Elves!

 

Rating: 7.3

Verdict: Drop

BARNSTORMERS #1 - Review

 

And I’m back for another three issue Scott Snyder Droperoonkski! I just can’t seem to stay away from his premises, they all look and sound great. The execution? Welllll...First there was ‘The Night of the Ghoul’ which I reviewed. It started out with a solid bang and then petered off into complete nonsensical swill on a page. This was my take on the 3rd issue Ghoul #3 which only made sense as an allegorical reveal of how Snyder escaped the clutches of the Big 2. Then there was ‘Clear’ which also started off with a bang bang for the first issue. The second issue was a nice helping of poo but the final issue came with that boom bap and brought it on home for the equivalent of an enjoyable satisfying handy as I finished it in my La-Z-Boy. I reviewed that here and came to the conclusion that Snyder's career paralleled Yankee slugger Giancarlo Stanton's

 

So to recap: That’s 1 of 3 solid issues for Ghoul and 2 of 3 solid issues for Clear. Can we, for all that is good and holy in the comic book universe, puhhhleeaaaaze get 3 solid issues here Synder? I’m optimistic. Maybe Dark Horse took a look at all these offerings of these Synder Triplets and released them in order of wack to bad ass which would mean that ‘Barnstormers’ was about to bring some serious sequential art ruckus for all us geeky comicfockas. You’ve got a romance book with a babe in a plane set in the roaring 20s drawn by Hip Hop Hooray Ho Tula Lotay Yo and this has the makings of a B52 Book Bombah.

 

Speaking of Dark Horse, has anyone noticed that they’ve been bumped from the major publisher sections of Previews World and relegated to all the Indie Books? They used to get their own section where all of their solicits were in one place. Now they’re just part of the soup that includes the likes of ‘Scout’ and ‘Artists and Writers’ and the questionably pornerific manga anime titles from ‘Oni Press’. It’s like they’re the AFC Richmond Greyhounds who just got booted from the Premier League. It’s like they’ve been sent down to the minors. It’s like they’ve shown up to the cool Comic Book After Party in the Hills and were told to wait on line like the rest of the rabble while IDW and Boom suckas waltz right on in.

 

Hey, it’s a justified demotion. Dark Horse originals have been downright putrid as of late. Seems like once they got sold to Embracer, the Swedish Video Game Conglomerate, their titles and story lines got cheaper than an Ikea coffee table made from balsa wood and hope. Embracer basically bought it to make all their IPs into TV Shows and movies and what they’ve delivered so far has been outright bunk; I’m looking at you Umbrella Acada-blecchhh. The worst part of the whole deal was that the word ‘mine’ was used extensively in the press release. Embracer couldn’t wait to ‘mine’ their creations. Stick a finger in my comic geek throat and hurl. This is the epitome of why comic books have sucked so bad in recent memory, they’re not being written for comic books they’re being written for TV. They’re not story boards you assholes, they’re comic books. Anyway, Dark Horse was smart enough to snatch up the Comixology Snyder Triumvirate and release them under their imprint to at least reclaim some of the respectability that they once had.

 

As for Barnstormers, first things first, Tula Lotay’s art is simply gorgeous. Each page is an art gallery, a master class in sequential story telling. Buying up all three of these issues is worth it for her triumph alone. Does Snyder keep up? For the most part, yes. A woweee holy moly babe who’s the daughter of a farmer is forced to marry some douchebag so her dad’s farm won’t get taken over. When the struggling red baron air devil dude ruins her wedding to said douchebag she sees it as a sign and takes off with him to escape her fate.

 

How psyched would I be if this girl showed up outside of my gym and told me I had no choice but to ride into the wide blue yonder with her in my Camaro:

 

Of course, I’d have to ask to her pitch in for gas money. I mean, it’s close to 6 bux a gallon out here in Commiefornia. I’d probably just drive out to Woodland Hills and tell her we made it to Death Valley where nobody would ever dare to look for her. Then I’d take her out for dinner at the prepared foods section at Whole Foods, ya know, really splurge on her, give her my rendition of my fave Shakespearean monologue. We'd be making out on our walk past TGIFriday's in no time.

 

There’s a bunch of interesting plot devices, including the lead pilot having hallucinations or psychotic episodes of a motorized robot with glowing eyes following him. Overall, Snyder drops another solid well structured set-up issue and cliffhanger and has his audience hooked for more. That’s 3 for 3 in first issues of these comixology originals if you’re not counting. If you’re an upcoming comic book writer perhaps taking a look at the first issues of these Snyder three-issue drops will clue you in as to how to grab an audience.

 

The one gripe I have with the book is, well, the females use the word ‘Fuck’ a lot. Like, was that even a thing back then? I thought if you said ‘Goddamn’ it was like using the c-word back then. I feel like girls said stuff like ‘My Stars’ or ‘Tarnation’ or ‘Gee willikers’ or ‘Take a Hike, Bub’. In Barnstormers, not so much. When our pilot asks a sexy redhead operator to help promote his plane stunts in the next town she says:

 

You want to win me over? How about some fucking quiet?

 

That sounds like every girl I match with on the dating apps. They don’t want me sending me them an initial text, they want me to just say nothing for six months to a year, yeah that’s it. These girls are tired of all this message noise! Oy vey.

 

Anyway, I mean, I can see any redhead dropping f-bombs but for some chick from the 1920s, seems a little out of sorts. The lead runaway bride babe also drops f-bombs every other text bubble. Seems like Snyder is either trying to make this edgy or  Embracer sent Dark Horse a message saying they want their IPs to have more F-Bombs because their AI Content Algos are telling them the target 18-34 demo needs to see or hear F-Bombs every 28.7 words in a game or show.

 

Buy this fucking comic you fucking geeks, fuck!

 

Aaaand I just got an e-mail from Embracer, they like my fucking writing style, do I have any IPs? Well Swedish Comic Book Publisher Destroyer, I got this video game concept where a horny dater virtually enters the messaging part of the app and wanders around for the duration of the game fighting indifference and the void.

 

I call it  ___________________.                                 

 

Let the bidding begin.

 

Rating: 9.1

Verdict: Pull

ANTARCTICA #1 - Review

 

If you had asked me several years ago what I thought about the ‘Flat Earth’ theory I would have smirked and said ‘C’mon dude’ I’m not a wacko. I viewed the flat earth question as a trap. A way to avoid listening to everything else I was talking about in regards to how the world worked because if I thought the earth was flat then clearly nothing coming out of my mouth should be taken as fact. Fast forward five years later and…hmm. I’m not saying I agree with the theory but what I am saying is I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that we are in fact living on a flat earth.

The ‘flatties’ have made some compelling arguments over the past few years and have presented a lot of damning evidence that goes contrary to our rounded minds. I just saw a video on Chinagram where somebody approached the cockpit of a plane where the pilot was standing and asked him point blank ‘Hey you’ve flown around the world and back do you think the world is flat’ and without hesitation the pilot answered ‘I absolutely know the earth is flat’ and then asked the questioner ‘Wait, are you filming?’. Combine all the flatties theories with the fact, the fact, that NASA is a complete sinkhole for money and that they have been lying and fabricating all kinds of nonsense to the general public for years and I would give the percentage of us living on a game board to be about 70% bubble butt to 30% n’assatall (no ass at all). 

I say all this because a lot of the flatties always point to Antartica as the gatekeeper to the secrets of our world. A place where you can enter a hole at the top of the earth to descend into a middle earth if you will where a whole race of wild beings live. A race that is probably hostile because their coffee sucks and they can’t get Hulu to watch the first two seasons of ‘The Bear’. There’s also the notion that upon traipsing to Antarctica that you will encounter an ice wall and when you sail beyond it you will find the outer wall to our planet that encircles our game board. Add in the fact that you also see nut job politicians and world bureaucrats like Herman Munster aka John Kerry flying down there for God knows what and it’s obvious that something shady is happening down there. Here's a recent video of some guy who actually had access to everything down there. This is probably the tip of the literal iceberg:

Perhaps the all the editors of DC’s Black Label were abducted and sent down there after they put out too many amazing comics last year, can’t have the peasants enjoying themselves too much.

It was with this thought in mind, hey maybe this book is going to get into all of this nutty round or flat butt stuff, that I picked up this issue. I hoped and pined for something gritty and substantive. I imagine if Brian Wood hadn’t been black listed by the Comic Book industry this would be right up his alley and the series would be freakin’ fantastic but unfortunately he tried kissing too many girls in comic book office bathrooms or something and that makes him unfit to provide the general public with great content. Well, I just put down this book, reading these pages was like reading this naked from the waist down with an ice block placed under  my balls, which is something I am very much NOT into.  Yeesh. 

The creator of this book is some dude named Simon Birks, a wily Brit who’s got Indie vibe all over him. Either that or he's about to be cast in another 70s Musician Biopic as the hip Music Engineer who looks at the main character laying down vocals in the vocal booth and says 'Crikey, this bloke can sing!'. Can’t say if any of the 50 books he’s successfully funded on kickstarter or any of the books on his imprint Blue Fox are any good, haven’t read any of them. I will say that Image in their bio of him on his site mentioned none of them but rather included a blurb that Michael Palin once called one of his films ‘silly’. That could be either a negative or a positive given the delivery of that word. Now, if the inflection on the last syllable went up then that’s a good thing. Just hear that in your mind, silly with the tone rising at the end. However, if the inflection went down on the second syllable, hear that one, then it sounds pretty bad right? Maybe Palin wanted to say garbage but decided to be nice and say silly. Here’s Simon boring some Pixie Chick who looks like the Kryptonian villain Ursa in Superman II. Clearly she was hoping to get Chip Zdarsky instead of a roadie for Spinal Tap for her interview:

Anyway, there is one thing that stands out from this book. The lead character Hannah is by far the absolute hottest homeless chick in the history of the planet. She may in fact eclipse the one and only Halle Berry who played a homeless chick in the film ‘New Jack City’. I remember once doing a comedy show with a comedian who had a bit about that. He said ‘Man, y’all see Halle Berry as a homeless girl. I kept saying to myself, wow, why is this girl homeless, she could be Halle Berry’ lol!!! I mean look at this girl, you telling me a chick like this would ever be homeless? 

 

 

 

She looks like a trust fund baby who buys designer hipster clothes and then takes an Uber Black to a grungy Silverlake venue to listen to a messy band so she can appear cool. Like, she approachesthe bar and giddily says ‘I’ll have a sir-veysa beer’ which she’s practiced saying on her Uber Black ride over. C’mon Birks!

Halle Berry is offered by a Hozier looking Coffee Shop Manager to use his shop’s bathroom to clean up. Maybe instead of offering his bathroom he could have called the local modeling agency and said ‘Hey I think one of your girls is sleeping on the street’. Hozier then tells Halle that if she goes to a trade show and learns a skill for a job that he’ll let her sleep in his shop. OR he could, I dunno, ask her out instead and, I dunno, be dating Halle Berry. Look, since all the diversity stuff here in Hollywood, Blonde Actresses are littered all over the city. There’s no use for them anymore. They take up about 20% of the homeless population out here. They just sit on the street, live streaming from their tents which are covered in their headshots. The local shelters have accommodated them with free plant based meals and recycled yoga mats, it’s been really a group effort to keep the Blondes surviving in town. You might ask, well Issac, why not ask out one of the Blonde homeless actress chicks out if they're so hot? Hmmmm? Because I'd be considered a White Supremacist and Racist, duh. I'm not falling for that trap, c'mon.

So Halle goes to this trade show, is disinterested in all the possible jobs except the one where she can learn how to be a mechanic. Now, here’s where Birks-enstock loses all credibility as a writer. Halle learns how to become a mechanic and then, get this, gets offered a job as an engineer on the top secret base her recently deceased dad was working on in Antarctica.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Seriously? 

 

Like, hey Halle, okay, here, this is a spark plug, this is how you change a car's oil, this is what a transmission does, to

Hey, forget MIT and years of training on advanced dark ops equipment with technology that hasn't been released to the public yet, come work on our Ice Base!

 

Halle, upon arrival, is then asked to fix an antenna or some sort, she goes outside and says 'Oh, duh, here, press this button, beep bop boop, all fixeroonied!' lmaooo. She's also walking outside in sub-zero temps for the first time with half her face exposed while wearing a cutesy little snow bunny outfit from REI.

Oh, and Coffee Dude gets an aneurysm, her home town probably got swallowed up in a sink hole, dude, this entire issue was completely useless. This has to be one of the silliest set-up issues in comic book history. Birksy, you could've started this issue at the last page when she just beep bop booped the antenna fix and then meets the cliffhanger chick, story starts.

This comic should have been called 'Halle Brrrrr-erry'. What a waste. Maybe they should track down the dude in the video above who knows all the secrets of Antarctica and have him write a comic book. It'll probably be awful, but at least it'll be true. Oy vey. What's next 'Mars-Nana' where Lizzo goes to Mars to plant banana trees for her dancer's poons and then hosts a music festival for the local aliens and Elvis Presley? I hear Lemire is working on that, sign me up!

Rating: 3.7

Verdict: Drop