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
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