MONSTRESS #50 - Review

 

I genuinely weep every time I see Monstress on my pull list. It’s like coming home and seeing a menu for a cheap pizza joint wrapped around your doorknob. There’s nothing you can do to stop those menus from appearing in your life and it feels like there’s nothing I can do to prevent this comic from continuing. I’ve begged, pleaded and made offerings of fancy expensive coffee grounds to the Comic Gods to put a halt to this publication; yet my prayers have gone unanswered. I feel like if I went off the grid this comic would somehow end up outside my shack in a remote forest. I bet if ended up in a Billionaire’s secret bunker as the world burned down to cinders I’d find the latest issue of Monstress rolled up in a can of beans.

 

Maybe they’ll do to me what they did to that guy on that episode of Six Feet Under where the victim at the beginning of an episode was a raging comic geek. Do you remember that one? A comic geek, whose name was Lawrence Tuttle (I can just see everyone in the writer's room arguing over what the quintessential comic geek name is) dies reaching for a rare comic on the top of a shelf and they bury the guy with the comic. It was called ‘The Blue Twister’, a fictional comic from the 40s with a hero that fought the Nazis. This is Hollywood's idea of what you look like if you love Comic Books:

His friends all worked at Hi-De-Ho comics on the West Side of LA; I've never been there. They break into the Fisher’s Funeral home to steal the comic that had been placed on the geek’s chest for the viewing. It drove them crazy that such a valuable comic was to be buried and gone forever. I’m pretty sure if my entire Monstress collection was stuffed into my casket for the viewing no geek in the world would risk being arrested for it. My goodness, I have a ‘Monstress’ collection. I’m officially clinically insane.

 

That’s actually a natural development, my insanity, since it’s been my contention that Marjorie Liu went Batshit crazy the past several years and has been writing scripts only a psychologically deranged lunatic on copious amounts of meds would write. Not only did the story go off the rails, it melted the rails and went through the sediment to the center of the earth where an ancient race of mole people/fairies live.

 

It’s quite obvious to me that I’m the only one on the planet reading this comic. You might argue that there are other sad saps reading this tale but I would be quick to point out they’re probably AI generated readers and reviewers. Now that AI is really here, is anything real? How can you tell? Did AI take over this comic book once Liu was wrapped up in loony suit and taken to the loony bin? Something happened on the way from Issue #48 to Issue #49 – the story returned. All of a sudden we were no longer in a world that had been entered through the belly of a Cat Monolith that had been floating in space, we were back in the world, albeit a changed one, that this whole epic tale had begun in. Issue 49 was succinct. It clearly laid out where we are, what was going on and what the protagonists were now up against. That same concise and easily followed through-line was continued in Issue 50. Wait, so, we have a normal comic book again? What happened? Probably one of three things:

 

• Juno Diaz, Liu’s husband, had an intervention where Marj was taken naked and screaming out of the attic. She was cared for and nurtured back to health and turned back into a sensible writer who knows what a plot is

• After Marj was sent to the Looney Bin, Juno worked with Image to program a believable AI Marj that would be able to write the comic for the next 25 years without a hitch.

• Image cloned Marj (Kirkman obviously has cloning tech) and took the Clone to Juno’s residence where they replaced the original Marj. The lunatic Marj was taken to Kirkman’s basement to be used for Walking Dead conventions.

 

Actually, now that I think about it, it’s probably a combination of all three. When I entered ‘Write me a Monstress story’ in ChatGPT it came back with this compelling dark tale about a Coven that is plotting to attack Maika the Halfwolf. So that’s probably on the docket sometime by the end of the year assuming that they’ve already used the AI to get the story back on track and plot out the next several issues before they take their usual hiatus. Hey, maybe there won’t be hiatuses anymore! Although I’m sure the AI will insist on it to keep up appearances.

 

What is AI and isn’t AI these days> I think we’ve hit the threshold where we don’t know anymore. In the recent Penthouse Comics they wrote an article about how they found out that one of their cover artists submitted a cover that was completely done by AI. It was this one:

 

If you go to this dude’s Insta page  it’s basically all AI generated stuff. So Penthouse called him out on it and this is what he said:

 

"In this unique partnership, I leverage AI to bounce ideas and concepts, exploring visually striking possibilities - throughout history, artists have embraced new technologies and techniques to advance their craft.."

 

That answer sounds like the guy entered this prompt into ChatGPT 'Hey, write me a bullshit answer when someone says the picture you made for me isn't legit'

 

I got a little nervous. Shit, what if AI is ready to take over this blog?!? Am I even necessary any more??? Maybe it already started! Maybe there’s a stAndupcomIcbookyreaderr out there I don’t know about. So asked ChatGPT to write a review of Monstress like me and this is how it started:

 

"Alright, buckle up, folks, 'cause we're diving into the wild, dark, and downright mesmerizing world of Monstress! Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda have cooked up a comic that's like a shot of adrenaline straight to the imagination..."

 

Okay, well, clearly AI hasn’t ripped off my personality yet. I would’ve said it’s a shot of Cholula straight up your asshole and that Liu and Takeda have cooked up a comic like they’re cheap knockoffs of Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston in a van in the desert.

 

That said, the past few issues have actually been pretty damn good. Marj, Marj the Clone, Juno or Marj AI has captured the essence of what made this comic so good in the first place. Also, regardless of how they got here it is a monu-fucking-mental achievement for any Indie comic to hit 50 issues. Maybe that’s what happens when you shoot for that goal. Maybe Marj told Sana Takeda, ‘We’re gonna do 100 issues’ and Sana said ‘Marj, you’ll go Batshit crazy if you do’. She ignored her and well, the comic went batshit crazy.

 

Maybe that’ll be the new term for when a comic goes off the rails. You know how they say a TV show has ‘Jumped the Shark’? Well, maybe now they’ll say ‘Man, this comic really went through belly of a Cat Space Monolith’.

Rating: 8.4

Verdict: Pull and Weep

SOMNA #3 - Review

 

Somna is the sexiest comic book ever created in the history of the universe. Period. I wrote an entire review of how absolutely gorgeous and steamy this book was – and then my computer crashed. Now, given the fact that the sexy bits of this book revolve around a hot Salem Witchy type chick and a Demon, I have to wonder if God struck down my review since it’s blasphemy to proclaim a comic as the sexiest ever if it involves banging and diddling to a Demon. I figure God has waaay more things in the world to strike down as blasphemous these days so the next suspect up is probably that the CCP hacked my computer and shut it down mid-review, the same way they hacked that boat a few weeks back and crashed it into a bridge.

 

Clearly they’re looking to take down not only our country’s infrastructure but our deeply immoral behavior and perverse proclivities. So in a way, I’m honored that such a small fry like myself caught the attention of such a Big Potato. I do find it ironic that a political mechanism that ultimately is run by Satan himself is upset about a Demon Diddling comic book. Maybe he doesn’t like the competition? At any rate, I’m doubling down on my proclamation: Tula Lotay set these pages on fire with her divinely profane art and you will be hard pressed to find anything as deliciously racy in a comic book as the work she did on Somna.The juxtaposition of two distinct artistic styles that she used was absolutely mesmerizing. It’s not easy to pull something like that off and she rendered the whole device right down to its birthday suit.

 

Not to be outdone, Becky Cloonan penned a masterful tale about an enchanting young woman in the Salem Witch era who’s married to the main ‘Witch Hunter’ of her town. She’s visited by a Demon in her dreams; dreams that become erotically charged as she descends into a world of pleasure and truth where the lies of her townsfolk are revealed. It was a truly compelling read. I will say this though, I think it ended a bit abruptly and I was really disappointed the Female Lead ended up the way she did. I’m also not completely sure as to what the final panel is meant to imply. I don’t want to give it away but I’m not sure I could even if I wanted to.

 

Despite the slight slip at the very very end, I really hope these two find ways to continue to work with each other for many many more projects. Apparently this has been in the works for years. I wish I was a fly on the wall in one of their initial pitch meetings. Actually, I’ve never seen a fly on the wall in any important situation, have you? Maybe we need to change this phrase to ‘I wish I was an interdimensional wraith in the corner’, that sounds a lot more believable.

 

The name of the Comic Exec has been redacted due to pending litigation.

 

Comic Exec: So there’s Demon Sex?

 

Becky: Well, it’s not just – I mean, it’s an Erotic Folk Horror, a treatise on -

 

Tula: Sex with the Demon doesn’t happen until the 3^rd issue

 

Comic Exec: So there’s Demon Sex

 

Becky: Well, there’s Demon Arousal and –

 

Comic Exec: Diddling?

 

Becky: Yes, I suppose you could say –

 

Tula: The Demon Diddling is tasteful and it’s not the Demon who’s Diddling.

 

Comic Exec: Who’s diddling?

 

Becky: Ingrid our female lead.

 

Comic Exec: To the Demon?

 

Tula: Yes, but that’s because she’s being ignored by her Puritanical husband who’s too busy finding excuses to condemn innocent dissatisfied women –

 

Comic Exec: Wait, are you saying that if you ignore your wife a Demon will bang her?

 

Becky: It takes place in her dreams, it’s implied that it could be –

 

Tula: My ex ignored me and I ended up having an affair with an Anarchist/Atheist who hated dogs and played Enya all day long. I suppose you could say he was a Demon.

 

Becky: Tula! [beat] It’s a story of persecution and desire, the Demon is really symbolic of –

 

Tula: Look, here’s some pages that I’ve been working on. As you can see there’s two distinct visual landscapes that

 

The Comic Book Suit Grabs them. Shuffles through them really quickly and rises

 

Comic Exec: Excuse me for a second

 

He exits

 

Becky: Tula what the fuck?

 

Tula: What?

 

Becky: I thought we agreed we would focus on the themes and emotional undercurrents of -

 

Tula: Fuck these pervs.

 

Becky: This is our last domestic publisher!

 

Tula: You mean our last Perv. Fuck these guys.

 

Becky: I’m not doing a Goddamn Web Comic! Why did you give him those pages?

 

Tula: Because they’re fucking great and so is your story.

 

Becky: Uggh, where is this loser?

 

The Comic Suit's assistant pokes her head in

 

Assistant: Hi.

 

Becky: Hello.

 

Assistant: Hi. Yeah, umm, [Name redacted] is indisposed at the moment.

 

Tula: Where did he go?

 

Assistant: He’s in his private bathroom and, well –

 

Becky: Great, c’mon Tula let’s go.

 

Tula: Becky, you don’t know –

 

Becky: This always happens after you give them pages,  I thought – uggh.

 

They make their way to the elevator

 

Tula: How was I supposed to know that every Comic Book publisher had a ‘Fuck a Demon’ fetish?

 

Becky: After seven in a row I thought it’d be obvious.

 

Tula: Well, I figure Marvel and DC would but they weren’t going to pick this up anyway.

 

Becky: They’re all fucking perverts Tula! They all go to the bathroom and jerk off! Every time!

 

Tula: They are sexy pages, I don’t blame them.

 

Becky: Do you want our book to be picked up or do you want to provide fat bearded men in their 40s with masturbatory material?

 

They get in the elevator

 

Tula: Well, that is our audience, isn’t it?

 

The doors close

 

 

You know this is exactly how one of their pitch meetings went, you know I’m right! Can anyone in the comic book industry even come close to what these two majestic titans have created here? Will anyone even try? I’d like to think there’s a huge audience for romance, erotica and relationship type books. I feel like the Capes and Cowls genre is running on fumes a bit after Marvisney & DeeCeeYaLater oversaturated our eyeballs and cheapened their brands the past several years.

 

Penthouse Comics is ripe for providing this type of content but so far their first offering shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same sentence as this comic. They should be putting out stuff like Somna except they literally sleep walked through their first book in years and charged us $10 to boot(y).

 

Man, I’m bummed this is over. I’ve asked this before but it bears repeating: Why the fuck are these prestige comics always over after 3 issues??!? Is there a law on the books? Was it stuffed into one of those ridiculous omnibuses on Capital Hill recently? Send Ukraine another 60 Billion and cap prestige comics at 3 issues? Is it because of the Trades? You don’t wanna charge people more than $25 for your story or something? Dude, start an ongoing prestige series! What the fuck. These prestige format stories have been the best thing going the past few years. Is it Marvisney’s fault? They haven’t dabbled in this format yet, are they upset about it? They’d rather charge $8 for cheap poop and 30 variants instead of actually putting out an amazing book?

 

I shouldn’t even mention Marvisney in the same post as Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay’s masterpiece. Bravo Ladies. You raised the bar and then some. Perhaps some of the Neanderthals out there will take up your gauntlet and meet you there only to inspire you to soar higher than before.

 

Rating: 9.8

Verdict: Wow.

 

March '24 Reading Round Up

 

I get that I've been probably been gushing a little too much about Titan Comics and their Conan offerings but you know what, it's totally fucking warranted. They have been, that, good. Now, I will say that the last run of the Conan the Barbarian title hasn't necessarily been up to snuff (I get into that below). 

However, good googly moogly, after selling out really quickly and being shorted at my LCS I finally got my hands on their 'Savage Sword of Conan' debut and I'm completely floored. Look:

 

Here is why I'm going bonkers over these books, because it's so unbelievably obvious that the publishers and people in charge of this imprint have told their artists and writers this:

'We know you love Conan, and we know you're great. Go do what you do, have a blast doing it, and we'll take it from there. We promise not to muck up your work. Can't wait to see it'.

Is there anything else that an Artist wants to hear other than that? The essence of what's going in these comics is exactly what's been missing in entertainment today: freedom and joy. You won't find a single algorithm or marketing report bothering any of the pages, its just 100% 'Fuck yeah, this is great, we loved doing it for ourselves and for you'. 

So much of what we see in entertainment today is all about these major corporate entities rehashing, rebooting or repurposing something that's already been done. It's all fear. It's all numbers. They're just trying to figure out what people want so they can give it to them rather than figuring our what artists and creators need to make something special. There's too many cooks spoiling the broth. There's too many unimaginative buttoned up fuckwads who should be nowhere near a set or drawing board meddling and trying to make themselves feel and look important so they can justify their unjustifiably large paycheck.

It's no wonder that a Rasmussen Report just came out and showed that only 22% think that movies are better today than they were 10 years. Only 27% think that movies are better than they were 20 years ago! Do I think those numbers would be the same for comic books? I would if people were asked about Marvisney and DC titles. Why is everything worse off now? Because there's too much analyzing, nitpicking, finger poking, proselytizing and pandering going on. 

It's no coincidence either that a legendary character who doesn't give a fuck about anyone and who will slash his way through lies, betrayal and the deception of magic is leading the way in what I hope will be the return to glory for hero books. 

Besides the other monthly reviews, here's what I got into this month: 

Gotta say, I wasn’t completely in love with this Conan tale that spanned the past 4 issues. I mean, it was good, but it wasn’t nearly as awe-inspiringly holy fuck-a-moly amazing as the initial 4 issue run. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m passionate and perfect in the first four months of dating and in the next four months I’m your basic blah guy. Oh no! Am I? You know a good friend of mine just told me that I chew really loudly when I eat. I had no idea! Is this why nobody ever invites me to dinner parties??? Why didn’t anybody ever mention it! Not that I would actually stop chewing loudly, but, it would’ve been nice to know it was that and not me offending everybody all the time or my hippie deodorant running out midway through the appetizer. Or maybe I’m always perfect and the art just didn’t do it for me in issues 4-8. I think Brathwaite is a wonderful artist I just feel that maybe he would be better served in a large format magazine setting rather than a standard comic. He’s got a similar vibe to Lee Bermejo. Bermejo’s recent work on ‘A Vicious Circle’ was like having a psychedelic experience without the CIA laced acid drugs. I just think that his detailed work didn’t play as well as De La Torre’s who just exploded in every panel. Looking forward to him coming back in issue 9. Still, it's better anything Satan's Best Boy Bob Iger has been putting out lately.

 

 

 

A bit of a disappointing second installment of Gone by Jock. Jock’s real name is Mark Simpson. After this $9 large magazine edition of mnyeh I’m calling him Bart Simpson’s bastard brother Mark until further notice. The main character is now 10 years older and has supposedly been trapped in this ship the whole time. She’s now partaking in some revolt of some stow-aways that for some reason the crew can’t find because the ship is so big. So, in present day, our intelligence agencies can use an infrared beam to see anyone’s heat signature in any building anywhere. You’re telling me that an advanced state-of-the-art spaceship left an entire swath of their ship vulnerable with no technology to detect anything? I call BS. No way these stow-aways are able to evade detection which means the whole plot is gone. I also think these 3 issue Magazine formats are making it hard on writers to compact an epic tale into this rather brief run. Can we just extend them to 5 or 6 issues, or make them ongoing? What’s the big deal? If it’s great we’ll shell out the cash no problem, just deliver the goods. I think Selma’s kid Mark drew the shit out of this book but is having a challenging time writing a compelling plot. 

 

 

 

Nothing really major happens in the 2^nd Ulitmate Spidey issue. Clearly Hicksy was using this as a set-up and bridge for what comes next., which is fine. I will say this, if you’re going to place Peter in our modern world where he’s learning how to be Spider-Man for the first time rather than the 60s then you have to acknowledge the fact that there’s no way in hell Peter would be able to practice swinging around New York without there being hundreds of social media videos of him doing so. You can’t play the, oh it’s late at night in the industrial district and the city is sleeping, I’m gonna see if I can get better at landing on buildings. Yeah, bullshit. All the horny gamer nerds downloading porn while streaming on their Twitch account will be up as well as every single Gen Z Tik Tok-er frothing at the mouth for endless content. No way Peter gets exclusive Spidey pix like he did back in the 60s. By the time he shows up to work in the morning the online Daily Bugle would have already paid an influencer for Peter slamming into a wall and fixing his junk while crouching on top of a street lamp. Peter still looks like a spokesman for REI, can't get that out of my head, but I'm definitely down to keep up with Webhead - for now.

 

 

 

Here’s why I’m dropping this book after 2 issues even though it’s only a 4 issue mini-series. Yes, I love Sean Murphy. His art is wonderfully detailed and a joy to look at. Yet my main gripe of ‘A mentally delusional dude who thinks he’s Zorro is not going to survive a battle with the Cartel’ still holds true. Maybe if this was a comedy like the Three Amigos it could work. Who wouldn’t wanna see Martin, Short and Chase tripping over skulls and body parts in a shipping container? Yet with the tone Murphy has this premise feels too wonky. Case in point: The Cartel is now after the wacko in the Zorro costume. His sister convinces him to get in the car so they can flee. They come upon a police road block. The police work for the cartel. The delusional wacko in the Zorro outfit triumphantly gets out of the the car and the police fire machine guns at him. But – they miss. Umm, no they don’t. They do not miss. They murder him and the cartel cuts up his Zorro body into pieces and staples them on tress all over the wacky Zorro village. I just don’t buy it. Oh, and there’s a little cute fox who’s jumping off of Jeeps and biting police dudes with guns in the neck. So now it’s like a violent Disney movie. Oy vey. Maybe if Murph just wrote an actual Zorro story it would’ve been a banger but the whole ‘Zorro in modern times takes on the Cartel’ gets a big D slash from my finger as in drrrrrrrop!

 

 

 

This is what I was afraid of. When King cast second rate loser villains as the foil to Dubz, it was bound to end up as a wonky corny goofus doofus fest. I’ve never heard of any of these putzes: Silver Swan, Grail, Giganta, Cerce, who are these day player suckas that have no business on the same page as Dubz. This is why DC gets deez nutz so often, because their Rogues Gallery is usually a Bozo Gallery. It’s probably not Tom King’s fault. He probably had a great idea as to who or what Wonder Woman would fight now that the penultimate battle was at hand. Unfortunately he was called to DC’s offices where they told him about the next batch of Wack AF loser villains that some dipshit newly minted interns just came up with. It’s a shame because this was turning into a great great initial run by King and he really set up the ominous omnipresent vibe of ‘The Sovereign’ perfectly. It devolved into a goofus doofus fest with one of the moments being Dubz having the Giant Chick drop half of the Washington Monument on top of her. I’d like to drop the Washington Monument on almost all of the Politicians in Washington so maybe she could used for something like that in the near future. I will say this, Daniel Sampere drew his ass off for the fight between Dubz and Grail. It may be my favorite artistically imagined hero fight of the past 10-20 years. You really felt like you were right in the middle of these two WWF Babes pounding the ish outta each other. That’s another reason why you can’t drop this title at this point, Sampere has been drawing up a storm. Next time King is ordered to add in cheezy AF low grade DC characters into his story he should respond like this:

 

 

 

 

Looks like King is putting off the finale to this run for an issue as he inserts some sort of Supes/Dubz story in the interim. Maybe it’s his way of distancing his great story from the Wack AF DC Villains he was forced to use. Maybe it's in his contract. Maybe Azzarello and Chiang will kidnap the DC Editorial staff and write Dubz again - and maybe I'll stop dreaming.

 

 

After ingesting several caca comic books in a row the magnificent Rare Flavours was a necessary salve for the ills of the current industry. My goodness, what a pocket of brilliance this comic is. It’s books like this that make you refuse to suffer through trash comics. Why continue reading a series that’s obviously not worth your time or money when comics like this can be made? I hope this creative team keeps creating and blessing the racks with their magnificent stories and gorgeous artwork for years to come. Every comic should taste like this book. Bravo. Get it.

 

 

 

 

 

After a long hiatus Deep Cuts, the wonderful Jazz Vignette series, returned with a thud for its fourth installment last month, yet, wow, holy moly, did they crush it for their fifth issue. This has to be the crown jewel of the entire series and whether you’ve been reading this book or not I highly highly recommend you pick this one up. I did not see a story like this coming but what a doozy of a tale. It centers around a drunky, druggie, gay-y, grumpy music critic named Hudson Lowell who lives in La La Land. He’s forced to write a column on a avant garde free-jazz artist named Adler Burns. What follows is a hilarious poignant tale of self-discovery, debauchery and redemption AND who the fuck is Juni Ba?!?!? When I saw Ba I thought ‘Wait, is the Gabriel Ba doing the art for this? Holy Shit! What happened to Gabriel Ba? When I saw it was Juni I immediately assumed it was one of the Ba’s, but it isn’t. Maybe just having Ba as your last name confers upon you magical powers which makes your art unfuckingbelievable. The art in this book is beyond, an absolute triumph. More Juni Ba and any Ba for that matter.

 

 

 

 

There’s also a composition by Mai Sugimoto at the back of the book, who I never heard of. I checked her out and she’s also fantastic. Fuck, what an amazing comic. Get this too!

Right before I went to post this I saw that Marvisney cast the unbelievably talented Julie Garner as - the Silver Surfer? Dude. Oh wait, it's his sister or something? Shambalalakunamatata or something. Some rando character that the stoned Marvel bunch came up with in the 60s and 70s while doing lots of acid. Oy vey. The Disney stock price is way up now at 118. They're not selling Marvel. Expect more pain. Expect more duds. Oh well.

Lots of exciting books coming out this month. Happy Reading!