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
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