Wow. A new Sean Murphy book! Where did this come from? I heard zero about this comic being released then all of sudden, oompah, a new Murph book on the solicits! Praise Be The Murph! How was the comic book world not pre-empted with oodles of ‘Murphy is dropping another gem’ hype articles? Am I missing something here? Murphy can do no wrong!
Punk Rock Jesus! Tokyo Ghost! The frikkin entire Batman: White Knight series! He single handedly created the greatest Bats Alt-Uni ever to the point that DC is like:
DC Suit: Please, Murph, White Knight every one of our fucking characters! Like, every single one! Even Mister Mxyzptlk, White Knight his corny ass as well!
Word has it you can’t enter the DC Offices without dressing like a White Knight character. I’ve heard that interns just print out drawings of his characters from Tokyo Ghost onto onesies and masks and walk around in them all day long. Maybe I’ll do that for Halloween. I’ll dress up as Punk Rock – wait, I’m Jewish, can’t dress up as Punk Rock Jesus. Maybe I can figure out a Punk Rock Rabbi or Punk Rock Bagel Broker or something.
Anyway, I’m wondering why this was so on the down low. After all he’s done for DC you’d think they’d be like ‘Sure dude, print whatever you want with us’. Except, they didn’t. It’s printed at, huh, Massive Publishing, who the fuck are they? Let me look them up, hmm, I don’t recognize any of these – wait, they’re Whatnot? Wait, are they Whatnot publishing or Massive? Pick one for goodness sake. Whatnot has been more like What? - Not. Their Ninja Funk book was an unmitigated disaster from the jump, reviewed here. Why is Murphy hobknobbing with Massive? Can’t Image, the greatest comic book publisher on the planet, hook a bad boy up with 5 issues?
I’m always so curious why comic book creators jump from publishers to publisher. I wish they put out Comic Book Creator salaries the way they did with professional sports players so we could argue over whether or not a guy or gal was sufficiently or overly paid or not. I feel like there should be a lot more transparency on how these amazing creators are getting paid. Like, DSTLRY put together some of the baddest Comic Book Superstars for their imprint, yet they’re charging an arm and a leg for their issues. Is this because this is what they need to charge for these creators to actually be paid properly or are they kinda price gouging us and inflating the price to inflate their new approach?
Whatever the case may be, I have no idea what this Plotholes book is about and I don’t care. It’s The Murph. I’m fired up to read thi – hmm, what the – okay well, the art is fan-fucking-tastic per usual but what the – okay, hmm. So these characters are like saving books and, hmm, umm, [flip flip fiip] but it’s Murphy! Woo Hoo! Seany Love! Bring the ruck – wait, dude, seriously. Oy. Umm, Seany Murph! The Murphster – the - uggh, really? Okay. Umm, okay, umm. Oy.
So, uh, well, umm, yeah this book is kinda wack.
I mean, the art, I could take in Murphy art every day and be happy but, yeah, I can see why DC and maybe other Publishers were like ‘Uhh, you got any Silver Paladins or Gold Wizards to pitch us?' Otherwise this ‘Book Heroes’ comic is a pass. Real quick on the premise: A rag tag group of literary misfits led by an elderly ‘Jane Fonda type’ jump from unpublished book (in imagination land) to unpublished book to save the books from their obvious flaws so that they ultimately get published.
The obvious response to this premise is 'Well, you should send these plot savers to both DC & Marvisney to save the comic book universe first', but that's probably too on the nose.
I feel like this is one of these ideas where if I met Murphy for a coffee in La La Land and he told me his idea I’d be like ‘Dude, that’s really cool like, wow, so out of the box’ but I’d be validating my parking and thinking ‘Dude, is Murphy losing it?’. Because you can’t tell Murphy he’s got a butt butt idea, you just have to trust that the guy is going to make it work. But this idea feels so, I dunno, like a promotional approach you’d read in pamphlets and placards at a library trying to encourage kids to read more. It doesn’t feel grounded at all and the group is so disparate that it’s not cohesive by any stretch of the imagination. Not to mention that the first issue centers around them saving a kid who makes comic books from his world being destroyed; a little too meta for me.
The ‘Something Epic’ series that Szymon Kudranski is putting out that’s ongoing right now is also engaging is a similar approach towards the whole idea of “What happens to imaginative creations when they’re not finished?” a brilliant concept. However, five issues in and it’s getting a little cornball what with the lead doing battle in the world of discarded imaginative creations, it just feels a little goofy.
The greatest comic to ever majestically triumph over the deconstruction of the entire literary construct was ‘The Unwritten’. My goodness, that comic was beyond phenomenal. Did you read it? If not, drop what you’re doing and read this scintillating mind blowing series that should get annual awards for being so fucking amazing:
I
mean, when a comic does something to perfection like this one it’s hard to take
anything else really seriously unless it shatters another mold and takes it to
another level. Murphy’s ‘Plot Holes’ doesn’t really do that. The world and the devices
he uses are, well, flimsy. A meter with a percentage on it that has dwindled to almost zero which indicates that, from what I can gather, that the world of digital books and the ability for this group to fix them is about to vanish? Yeah, I'm not buying it.
Plus the oddball assortment of characters from various genres feels like he and his beautiful and talented wife Katana were up getting high and just threw out a bunch of different archetypes to be included. I mean, one of them looks like a Calvin and Hobbes reject and none of them are even close to being fully developed. There’s some wonky large alien ‘Dune’ worm that’s jumping from book to book and destroying them, I dunno, as I said, feels like a Library Marketing Approach.
Now, despite all of this I am on board for subsequent issues. It is Sean Murphy after all and if anyone can rescue a premise and turn it into a – wait, what is he doing, he’s doing a Zorro series next with Matt Hollingsworth? Umm, hmm, Murphy! Woo hoo! Oy. Is this like him owing something to the people who are behind Massive Publishing and Whatnot so rather than give them his gems he’s just giving them some throw-away stories? Like, is this comic in the vein of Prince’s ‘Chaos and Disorder’ when he just pooped out an album to finish off his Warner Brothers contract so he could own all of his own masters?
I did a little digging and it seems this comic was crowd funded back in the summer of 2020 and made $250 K. Wow. Maybe Murphy freaked out during the lockdowns and was like ‘Dude, I gotta get a book funded and made, my White Knight life is over!’. Here's the IndieGoGo link for that campaign:
Maybe Murphy is too busy working on completely destroying the JLA/Wonder Dubz White Knight books that he doesn’t have time to make his own premises sparkle. He’s still doing that right? Well of course he is. Maybe this is his ultimate shell game. Look over here as I put out some middling books at a wack imprint while I completely overhaul the entire DC Universe with my White Knight brilliance. Maybe this group of Plot Holes heroes is a wink to his actual team of rebels who are hacking away at the DC decay that's been ongoing since the beginning of this year.
Maybe it's a good thing this didn't get picked up by DC or Marvisney. If it did the series would probably have to be changed to 'The Sinkholes'.
Rating: 6.3
Verdict: Pull for now
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