Well, another election come and gone. One group is losing their minds while another group gloats. We’ve got meltdowns, sanctimonious finger pointing and doom and gloomers gloomily dooming and damning all of us. My reaction to all of this is…yeah, so what, DC and Marvel still suck wrinkly donkey scrotum.
Which got me to thinking - could there be a Comic Book Election??? Like, could the comic book masses finally be able to influence these corporate conglomerates to bend to their will? I get that these are privately owned companies but they deeply exist within the public sphere, shouldn’t there be more accountability rather than the effects seen on their bottom line when geeks say yuck to their titles? Consumers can always vote with their dollars but sometimes they’re too stupid to realize they keep voting for caca poop because they’re used to it.
It’s like pop vocalists. So many of them are auto tuned or can’t sing for shit yet when one comes out who can actually sing and hit a note or two everyone loses their minds simply because the bar has been set so low. That’s where we are with the Big Poo. The bar has been set so low that when a decent comic comes out everyone goes bonkers.
So what if the Comic Book Community came together - okay that will never happen but, what if it did - and collectively approached all the major comic book publishers and said:
‘From now on we are going to vote every four years for our feeling about the Head/CEO of all the major comic book publishers: Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, Boom, IDW etc. If your approval rating dips below 33%, meaning 2 outta every 3 comic geeks thinks your comics suck, then you have to replace the head with somebody else otherwise we will collectively abstain from purchasing your comics’
A far fetched fantasy? Sure. Yet I would be interested to see a poll that is sent out to the comic book buying masses to see how they felt about all the publishers. Would they listen? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s no secret that the American Comic Book Market is in a free fall, perhaps a vote by those who care the most would crystallize the discontent to the point where there are shifts in leadership.
Then if the publishers ignored the will of the geeks the geeks could revolt and have the equivalent of a Boston Tea Party but instead of tossing tea over the bow of a ship the geeks could just be tossing comics out of their long boxes. Imagine a country just littered with comic books everywhere! Of course they would all be bagged and boarded because nobody would take the time to take them out of the bags and boards and eventually geeks would stop and rifle through all the piles of comics looking for gems and then the country would basically turn into one enormous garage sale of free comic books for everyone.
So, yeah, nothing would ever get done with the losers who might be running the comic book industry but hey, what a glorious day to celebrate where comic geeks are huddled over comics, stopping traffic everywhere while checking their apps for variant cover prices, we’d turn the entire country into one big local comic shop for a week. Here’s what I got into this past month:
I gave this a shot, because, I dunno,
my pull was low? Yeah, no bueno. It reads like one of those cheap Penguin
Paperbacks you used to get from the library when you were a kid from the
Mystery aisle. A group of friends befriend a new adopted kid in grammar school
who’s a cripple. Of course the cripple is the best of all that humanity has to
offer and becomes a genius and a superhero because that’s what all people with
handicaps do. He gets brutally murdered and of course the savvy sassy chick of
the group is out to find who it is, and surprise surprise it’s probably one of
the friends from their childhood. Whatever. Another dud from Image. Now excuse
me while I pick up where I left off in my Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys Mystery ‘The
Secret of the Silent Dating App’ 6.2
If you love fantasy and literature and you’re
not reading this comic then you’re truly missing out on an absolutely
astounding series by Tom King. Wyndhorne may very well be his best work ever
and Bilquis Ivey is fast becoming one of my favorite artists. The story is being so perfectly executed and paced that it’s hard to not get excited
for every upcoming issue; that’s no small task these days. This issue in particular was riveting and the moment with the Helen's Elder Custodian Lady berating Helen's Grandfather for not loving Helen enough as he's forced to kill a dragon that appeared because of her wheedling was especially fun. Typical for an English broad to not be impressed enough with a Dragon to put a halt to her reprimand. I feel like English girls and Latinas would not let a dragon get in the way of telling you how wrong you are about everything. Curl up with a hot
cup of tea and get lost in this magical story. 9.5
Saga has hit a wall. Seems like we’re in this loop of awkward
pre-teen angst and growing pains mixed with somebody is convincing somebody to
give up information on somebody so they can hunt them down and kill them.
Actually, it’s a lot of: Tell me where this person with wings or horns or a
retractable dick is! I don’t even know why anybody is being hunted down at this
point. Is there still a war going on? I don’t know. What did they do again?
I’ve forgotten. Where are they running to or where are they hiding out? No
fucking clue. Again, Fiona Staples could illustrate Bazooka Joe comics and I
would buy them up every day but this story is officially in Duds-ville. After
one of the most scintillating 54 issues to mark the first half of this epic
tale, the last 15 have been blah; it’s SaBlah. Hey, it happens to the best of
them. Can BKV turn it around, well, duh. Yet this comic has dropped into
‘Monstress’ territory where I still buy it every month yet give it the stink
eye. It’s a very stinky eye. 6.9
The classic “Frost Giant’s Daughter” story by Robert E.
Howard is being tackled by the brilliant creative team behind the main Conan
title. I’ve seen this story before in previous Conan iterations, the last great
one was by Kurt Busiek and Cary Nord when Conan was at Dark Horse. The results
here are of course spectacular, why would you expect anything less? Now that I’ve
seen this tale a bunch it got me to thinking about it and, well, I think it’s
basically a story about a bar fight. Check this out and tell me this isn’t the
core plot of the Frost Giant’s Daughter:
So, there’s a huge bar fight and a bunch of burly dudes
are beating the shit out of each other. The strongest dude wins and lays waste
to all the other drunk losers. A hot Redhead at the bar who’s bored yet
intrigued by the melee watches the whole thing and realizes, hmm, the Dude that
won is actually a stud. She’s wearing hot pants and a crop top. She flirts with
him a whole lot and obviously, after kicking all this ass, he’s up for some
ass. She teases him and teases him to the point that he’s frothing at the
mouth.
She then leaves the bar and gets in a cab. So does he. He
tails her tail. Realizing she went a bit too far she has the cabby take her to
her house in Queens. She’s texting her meathead brothers that a guy is following
her. By the time she gets there they’re ready for him. The Dude finally shows
up and the brothers are like ‘Yo, what the fuck, leave our Sis alone asshole’.
They fight the Dude and the Dude kicks their ass as well. Now the redhead is
freaking the fuck out, she screams for Daddy. Her pops pulls up in a Çadillac, cuz he's a Pimp like that,
and scoops her up before the Dude knows what’s going on. He’s completely
bewildered, like, WTF? Was this chick even real? Where did she go? He notices
that there’s a business card on the ground, picks it up, reads it. It says – ‘For
a Great Insurance Quote call Frosty’s Insurance’. I know, I’m good. 9.0
Without a doubt, this is the best Spider Man comic since,
I dunno, McFarlane? I never read Spidey past the 80s or 90s, seemed like
everything since then has been butt. Yeah, yeah, you’ll disagree and say this
guy or that guy had a good run and I’ll say, a good run at being a butt comic.
This just feels right. It feels like
what a great Spidey comic should be. Hickman is masterfully handling all the
elements to a tee and also, dare I say it, making it really fun. A Spidey comic
should be fucking fun! My goodness! It’s rough out there, is it too much to ask
to have a fun Spidey comic to read once a month?? I don’t know why and how Marvisney
hasn’t fucked this up yet, oh wait, they did when they stuffed another artist
and storyline in for two months at the beginning. Somebody find Hickman and put
a security detail around him so Marvisney dipshits don’t mess with his flow. I
will say that Hicksy did have a blunder during this issue. After Spidey belted
the villain dude onto the street, he and Green Gobby call for an ambulance and
an action heading then read ‘Minutes Later’. Umm, yeah, this is New York right?
More like, ohh, an hour or so later. I think my head would’ve exploded if
Hicksy drew in Flava Flav on the sidewalk and had him yell up from the street
to Spidey and Gobs that ‘911 is a Joke’. 9.3
I think this wacky, throw a ridiculous off the wall premise
at the ceiling and see if it sticks, comic is becoming one of the best titles
that I’m reading right now. I didn’t think it had legs after the first two or
three issues but it really turned a corner and now I’m totally invested in the
Cowboy and the Samurai chick on a Zombie Island in purgatory. The fact that it’s
also at Image guarantees that the creative team will be allowed to cook and won’t
have meddlers in suits with unhealthy eating habits telling them what to do. In
lesser hands this probably would have crashed and burned after 5 issues but
with Duggan at the helm it’s being nicely simmered. Image’s website says ‘This
series is stabby,
shooty, and horny, and you know you need it’. Clearly that’s going to be my new
bio for my dating app profile: I’m stabby, shooty and horny and you know you
need me! I mean, that’s guaranteed to reel in at least a few pyscho goth actresses
or a Social Media Manager/Creative Director who hates herself and is way taller than me. 8.7
Wait, what? We're getting a fourth issue of this??? No fucking way! Praise DSTLRY! I think this may be the first of the prestige formats that were locked into this inane '3 Issues a Series Max' mandate to extend to 4. Well, it's a long time coming and of all of the prestige format series currently going this is by far the best of them. It may actually be turning into one of my favorites of the year. What a perfect pairing between Tynion and Ward. I hope they become the new Waid & Samnee or Bendis & Maleev of the industry and keep churning out stories. This one in particular has been an absolute thrill to read while taking in Ward's otherworldly art work. Huge recommendation to pick this up. Also, is it me or do you the word DSTLRY and think it means Dusty Larry? I think that's what I'm going to call them from now on. Man, Dusty Larry has been putting out some uhhmayyyzing comic books this year. Go Larry! 9.8
That's all I got! Next month I'll be dropping my best of 2024. See you then...
