Here. We. Go. This past week Colin Kaepernick of all
people came out and announced that he’s launching an AI Start-Up called ‘Lumi’ that
will create AI Generated Fucking Comic Books.
Now you don’t have to sit down to draw or write a comic book you can take a
knee like Colin and suck on AI’s Shlong while it makes you into a regular Jack
Kirbynick. I don’t know how we got from ‘You’re not good enough to even get a
roster spot on the piss poor quarterback starved Las Vegas Raiders’ to ‘Hey,
has AI ruined comic books yet? Get Colin in here!’
Of course there’s all the standard jargon mumbo jumbo
bullshit that makes you think that it’s going to give some disadvantaged kid
with a dream who scribble his comic book ideas down with crack pipes dipped in
ink: “Lumi’s
mission is to democratize storytelling by providing tools for creators”, yeah
yeah blah blah. Just be honest and say, "Are you a fat talentless shlub who is finding new
ways to be lazy? Wanna tell the AI followers of yours that you’re creating an
AI comic book for them? Well here’s Lumi".
Yes, I know, the distance between AI generated Caca and organically produced Human art
is an enormous chasm right now. But every day they inch closer and closer
together. There’s this notion that ‘Democratizing’ anything will make it
better. We’ve done that to music, video content and films. I’m quite sure it
hasn’t made anything better. It’s made it so you really have to wade through a
swamp of poop to find the diamonds. I’m all for getting rid of the gatekeepers in
Entertainment who climb out of Satan’s Bunghole every morning to say no to good
people with good ideas. But somebody’s gotta stand on that wall and say ‘Yeah,
this sucks, people shouldn’t be exposed to this junk’. Lumi: The Comic Book
Version of Unsolicited Dick Pix.
Here's what I got into recently:
I’m trying to figure out why this book ended up on a down
note for me. It’s everything I was looking for. An old school/first days of the
Bat set in the 30s; a dark gritty backdrop of a book in prestige format. And yo,
don’t get me wrong, the first two drops were great, well, maybe not
unbelievably great. Like, the end of the first issue was a red flag; the
cliffhanger was way over the top. The cliffhanger of the second was also a bit, hmmm,
out of character (Bats holding a gun in his hand), although I can let that
slide due to it being set in his origin story. If I had to guess, I think the
vernacular just got too outta hand for me. I mentioned this before, but every
line of dialogue seemed to have some sort of old timey word pulled from a 1930s
lexicon of slang and phrases of the day. I mean, it got a bit ridiculous which
pulled me out of the story.
You know what this book was like? It’s like going on a
date with a babe who you’re completely thrilled about. You’re talking about her
to your friends, you’re checking out her socials and loving every bit of it.
You’re looking at Astro compatability (yes you fucking are, admit it) and your
signs check all the boxes. You meet up, she looks amazing…and then she starts
talking. And, well, there’s something about her voice that feels like bread
knife on the back of your skull. You can’t be sure but it feels like with every
word that zings out of her mouth your sinuses hurt more. She’s also putting you
to sleep, there’s a distinct droning that activates your melatonin and before
you know it you’re drowsy at 7pm. Yeah, somebody poured her into her dress but
her sound is a car alarm that doesn’t quit at 2am. Most male animals would just
think, ah, well, I’ll bang her and be done with it. But you know better. You
know that the noises she’ll make while in the throes of passion will ruin sex
for you for at least 5 years. Your friends will ask you ‘What happened???’
You’ll want to say she sounded like a donkey being run through a wood chipper
but all that will come out will be ‘I dunno, something was off’. And your
friends will look at you with a gleam in their eye while thinking ‘Wow, he’s
not all about looks, he really cares about vibe and what’s going on in the inside
of a woman’. But you’ll know. You’ll know. First Knight was hot. But it hurt my sinuses. 8.7
I was first hipped to the work of Juni Ba in the
delightful ‘Deep Cuts’ mini series that consisted of 6 different jazz vignettes.
His installment was absolutely fantastic. It actually blew the other
installments away it was that good. Looks like the industry is catching on to
his immense talent and the jobs are coming in. I was also immensely psyched to
see this in the solicits but, I dunno. It’s definitely got afairy-tale/stylized Netflix anime series vibe
to it which is cool but, I’m not sure it fully works. One thing he did accomplish
was to clarify all of the Robin characters. Juni’s succinctly summed up each of
them well enough where I could at least pass a Robin quiz whereas before I
would definitely fail. Let’s be honest: Tim Drake and Jason Todd are weak as
fuck names for Robin. As far as I see it, it’s Dick Grayson and then bubkes.
Damien is straight outta ‘The Omen’ and I’d rather see Bats all verklempt
around Thalia than deal with a spitfire kid.
This feels like a YA title. There’s an ‘aww shucks, air
this at 3pm for the after school crowd kinda’ energy about it. My sense of this
series is that DC peeped Juni’s unbelievable work in “Deep Cuts” and put him on
a project they had in mind. I think Juni’s story is solid if not unspectacular but
the art is for sure bananas. I don’t think Juni is really a capes and tights
guy and hopefully he’s got a plethora of projects in his noodle that he’s
psyched to unleash upon the world. 7.9
Now this what I’m talkin’ bout. Dude. Yay. I mean, for
goodness sake, it’s a Spidey Comic. I just wanna read Spidey fighting shit,
slinging some webs and his verbal zingers. After two BS issues of backstory bingo,
one that was a complete utter dinner party bore and one that was interesting
yet could’ve been boiled down to a few pages, the real creative team of this
book is back and delivering the goods. I read it. It was fun. I enjoyed the
escapism. Nobody was interjecting their personal bullshit it was all pure
superhero in tights goodness done by two dudes at the top of their game. Can it
all be so simple? Yes it can. Time to clone Hicksy and Marco and put them on
every single Marvisney book until a new fresh crop of writers and artists are
ready to come in and return this brand back to what made it great in the first
place. 9.1
I somehow missed this when it came out several months
ago, weird. I would have definitely grabbed it so I’m wondering how this
slipped through my fingers. Perhaps it’s the Universe saving me $9, I thought.
With my pulls being so low these days I had my LCS grab one for me and well,
all I gotsta say is sometimes you gotta trust that the Universe has your back.
My goodness this was gross, yuck. Yuck. Brian Azz, this is Yuck. You get the
azz. I’m all for Westerns but this was a gory yuckfest about some steely eyed
d-bag criminal who gets out of a Mexican jail and goes on his revenge spree.
This includes finding his wife, who has since married a Reverend, and killing
her husband. There’s lots of images of dead dogs who have been shot and a
brutally intense image of a mother of a murdered family that the D-Bag and his
fellow D-Bags come upon, who’s clearly been tied up, bound and, well, you get the idea, bleccch. The last straw was when one of the Wife’s three kids
has a piece of his ear bitten off by one of the D-Bag’s henchman simply because
the ears looked too big. Eff you B Azz, jeez. Go to therapy and work out your anger
issues and Venmo me $9. Consider this DSTLRY’s first major dud. 4.5
I honestly can’t with this book anymore. I’ve
grown weary of opening these gorgeous pages drawn by Sana Takeda. Yes, they’re
gorgeous. I’ve been dating this gorgeous comic for almost 10 years now and
there’s no other way to say it but she’s gone completely fucking bonkers. She
just babbles incessantly about the same shit, just on a different day. I don’t
see how Marj Liu can expect anyone to pick this book up after a month or so of
having read the previous issue and not squint their eyes, rub their forehead
and go ‘what the fuck is going on here???’. The longest relationship I’ve been in
has been a little over 3 years so I don’t know how to break up with someone I’ve
been with for 9 plus years. Maybe I need to take this book to comic book
therapy and hash things out, is there such a thing? Can someone make it and
book me for an appointment? I feel like Monstress is one of the casualties of
the Mandela Effect. Maybe we’re in the alternative Universe where Monstress is
a shit show and in the previous Universe it was spelled Monsstress or maybe
Monstresses and it was fucking awesome. Somehow I feel in the Multiverse every
Monstress version is hurting people’s brains. Monstress is a multiversal
multidimensional punch to your pull list no matter where you exist. I feel like the only ones, besides myself, who are reading this book at this point are those who dress up like cats and pee in litter box that's been placed in the bathroom for them. 6.0
Greatness in serialized Comics requires
consistency, a none too easy task especially in this day and age of hiatuses, variant
cover madness and the subservience to the trade market. Yet every now and then
something comes along that defies genre and the shortcomings of the industry to
deliver a timeless story that will stay with you long after you add it to your long box. Rare Flavours was just that. The title
encapsulated the book itself: a rare feat and a taste of something truly
special. Every single offering of this six issue course was an enchanting
delight, deftly written and wonderfully drawn by two masters of their craft. Rare
Flavours transcended their logline and elevator pitch. It was this ephemeral
paragon of storytelling, myth and family that will stay with their audience
long after the embers that cooked up this beauty of a book die out. 10.0
There's a story in here where Conan turns into a Werewolf and has to fight a town that has already turned into Werewolves. GTFOH. Dude. As Stan Lee used to say: Nuff said. 9.4
That's all I got. I'm off to work on a new AI start-up called 'Homie'. It will democratize comic book blogs for everyone by providing the tools necessary to write and post blogs to the masses as if they were written by a Cholo from LA.
Is
the Comic Book Industry falling apart? Well, I think you can swap out ‘Comic
Book Industry’ and put almost any business model, institution or political
party before the words ‘falling apart’ and it would be an apt statement for
this past year or two. Yet this year, more than any other, has been in my view
one of the roughest years of comic books that I can remember. It just felt
waaaay off. I mean, I hear how LCS retailers are constantly complaining about the publishers. I see how
stores are closing all over the country. I hear the Comic Book Pundits (am I
one? Mmm, not really) decrying the ills and missteps of the industry itself.
Fans seem to whining and moaning left and right, what the fuck is going on?
Well,
I can only speak from the experience of a dude who has been buying comics for
over 40 years. What I would say is, mmm, it’s not that it’s falling apart it’s
that it’s been reassigned. In other words, comics are means to other ends
especially when you’re talking about the Big Poo (the Big 2). For these
corporate death stars, comics feed into its inordinate amount of IP offerings
that are charted on X & Y Axis graphs and all kinds of business degree
mumbo jumbo bullshit that have basically ruined comic books. Sure, the
independents are going strong. Wait, no, scratch that, Image is still going
strong while other independents thrash and claw for a limited audience with either
rehashed characters or gruesome over the top silly horror/sexy books. Dark Horse got bought out by a gaming company and their titles have also sunk to new lows of blecchh. Even Image,
as wonderful as they are, didn’t knock a lot out of the park this year.
Here’s
the bottom line for me: I bought 150 comic books this year. That’s the lowest
amount of comics I’ve purchased since I started keeping track of it about 15
years ago. Back in the heyday of 2016-2018 I was buying over 300 comics a year.
So what happened? Well, Marvel got bought out by Satan aka Disney and their
comics became all but unreadable.
I seriously root for Disney’s stock to crater
every day with the hopes that, I dunno, they sell Marvel cuz they need the cash
or don’t care anymore? DC? I dunno either, last year was the year of their
amazing run of Black Label titles, this year? Pure poop. I don’t think anyone
knows what the fuck to do or how to do it over in DC and it shows. Their recent
Aqua Turd movie is dead in the water as was most of the garbage they put out
this year. So when you have the Two Pillars of the Industry mired in caca it
fucks things up for everyone else. One would think “oh there’s now a void to
fill because Marvel & DC are churning out titles that look like the pink
goo that they make McNuggets with” but it’s actually the opposite. Hate on them
as much as you want but Marvel & DC are
comic books. If they’re going strong everybody is going strong because that
means butts in the Comic Book shops which means more sales of the independent
offerings.
Here’s
another reason why I bought less books: y’all raised the prices a bit too much.
See, back in the day I could jump on a book for 5-6 issues, grab a mini-series
for 4 issues, try out a series and spend about $15, woop dee doo. Now, every
story arc/mini series is like $25-30, hmm, yeah fuck that! If issue one sucks,
buh to the bye homie. Now I’ll check out the solicits for future issues to see
what’s going on with the plot before I decide to pick something up whereas before I wouldn’t
care, I’d just add it to my pull and read the whole series, because, well, I love
comics. But I’m not trying to spend over $100 a month on comics right now especially since most of them are so disappointing. So
with the quality of books in the toilet and the prices up it makes for a very
nasty combination.
Mark
Millar, who I’m not a big fan of but who I deeply respect as guy who loves
comics, had this to say on what he thinks should be the fix for the industry
I
wouldn’t know if this would work or not but it’s clear to me that something has to change. Somebody has to come in and clean
fucking house at the Big 2 like Javier Milei is doing in Argentina. I need a
Comic Book Geek of the People to go in the same way that Javier did and get rid
of all the Editors and Ideological Fuckwits that have ruined Hero Books.
Yo Marvel and DC Dipshit Editors? AFUERA!
There’s
a guy who makes amazing videos about the Comic Book Industry. I would say he is
the true voice of reason for Comic Book Geeks like myself and it’s clear that
he loves comics as much as anyone. I remember watching a video of his where he
said that the Big 2 were more interested in the Variant Cover market than they
were in actually making good comics. So, that makes a whole lot of sense to me.
People are buying up covers at astronomical prices regardless of what’s inside
so the more you poop out and the more you create artificial scarcity for them
the more shekels you will make. That’s all well and good for your corporate
hooker and blow budget but, yeah, sucks for us. If that is what’s really going
on then we may not see the end of this downturn for a while until they cut back
on these variants. You can check out this dude’s channel here:
Anyway,
as for the ‘Best of the Year’ it was a slog to say the least. Last year I chose
a dozen books that were absolutely amazing along with some honorable mentions. This year? I couldn’t even find 10 titles
that blew me out of the water. Not even 10 for goodness sake. I went over every
week of my pulls and, man, I pulled a lot of stuff that ended up sucking ass. To
be clear, this list isn’t of comics that were good, or decent or really good.
This is a list of Greatness. This is a list of books that after I put them down
I went ‘That was fucking awesome’ If I didn’t feel like that then it’s not on
this list. So yeah, not that many to choose from but these did the trick, here
ya go…
8.Deep Cuts
- A series of stories that travel through the history of Jazz? Sign me the fuck up! Kyle Higgins and Joe Clark along with some bad ass artists deliver some wonderfully poignant and historically accurate tales that span the early decades of Jazz. I really wish this was an ongoing series rather than a standard ‘Six issues and we’re done’ affair. That’s something that would be exciting to dive into every month. I really loved the sheet music that they included in the back matter and the homage to Blue Note. This was Image's Golden Offering of the Year by far. For some reason they dropped three issues and then stopped in July but it looks like they’re picking up again in January.
7.barnstormers
- Dark Horse has been reprinting all of Scott Snyder’s Comixology’s Originals Digital Series into 3 issue Drops for the past year or so. One was atrocious (We Have Demons) one was mediocre (Night of the Ghoul) one was really good (Clear) but this one was downright awesome. I’d say the main reason besides an out of the box story of a death defying pilot and his forbidden love on the run is Tula Lotay’s spectacularly beautiful art that graced each and every panel. Bonnie & Clyde take to the air! What an absolute joy to read. Snyder’s got another one that just started, ‘Canary’ and so far it’s also a great first issue. Go Scott Go!
6.The Avengers: War Across Time
- The best thing Marvisney put out all year by far was a Retro Series. What a fucking blast it was to read a story that hit on all the right notes from the Golden Era of Comics! They dusted off some dude named Paul Levitz who was probably busy noshing on a pastrami sandwich at Katz’s Deli and made him pop out a paean to what made hero books great: bright colors, silliness, goofy and sexy dialogue, gravitas, time machines and buildings and streets that were always being destroyed or spewing lava men. I’ve been saying for years that Marvisney should just publish monthly facsimile issues of their great titles like Spidey & FF & The Avengers on a monthly basis so it could give us the feeling that we’re reading them as if we were living back in the 60s when they first came out. But that would be too much fun, so, that won't work these days.
5.Love Everlasting
- The second arc of what very well might be Tom King’s masterpiece of a series upped the ante and the wow factor on what already was a perfectly executed story of Joan Peterson and the multiple timelines of deadly love that follows and torments her through all of her lives in all of the different eras that she has lived in. Written in the style of a dimestore comic book romance this mind trip of a book just kept getting better and better from issue to issue. It’s one of those rare books that you really get excited about when you see a new issue pop up on the solicits. Elsa Charretier is officially an Art Super Star and I will follow her work wherever she goes. I will also say that so far King's first few issues on Wonder Woman are quite good, the best Dubz story I’ve read in ages! Tom King comin’ wit da ruffneck bidness in the two three boyeee.
4.Batman: City of Madness
- It was a really tough year for my homie Bats. I just could not get into anything that he was in. All the books were just blah or refried plot beans. Sean Murphy ended his beyond brilliant White Knight run on a ‘ehh, that was cool but not great’ note then handed it off to his wonderful wife and a putz who wrote a series about the Joker’s kids which I couldn’t stomach. I suffered month after month begging the Comic Book Universe to deliver me a majestic Bat Book and it finally answered my prayers at the very end of the year with Christian Ward’s eye popping beast of a book. My goodness, give this man an ongoing series for the next five years! In a year of cheap fake meat Bat burger stories this was the Wagyu patty with the Goldleaf Bun story that beat the bejeezus out of them all. Hopefully this is the beginning of a new run of great Black Label titles.
3.Rare Flavours
- The creative team behind one of the best comics of the decade ’The Many Deaths of Laila Starr’ returned with another magical tale that invoked the earthly representation of another Hindu deity. This time around it’s a Raksha or demon that fancies itself as a type of cannibalistic Anthony Bourdain. Each issue just feels like an event as you’re transported away from your life and immersed into a fully realized elevated world of monstrous beauty. I feel like these two had a conversation that went something like 'Should we tell the Demon Bourdain story now or should we wait?' as if they were waiting for the perfect moment to unleash this gem of a story on humanity. Ram V and Filipe Andrade have that uncanny artistic synergy that doesn’t come along very often in comics. Catch them while you can.
2.A Vicious Circle
- Only one issue of this mind blowing three issue series was released this year, over six months after its first issue which was released in December of 2022 but oh what a fucking issue it is. The art in this comic is absolutely astonishing. Lee Bermejo puts on a clinic on how to turn a comic book into art gallery material. I suppose with the amount of assumed work and attention to detail that went into each of the first two issues it’s understandable why it takes them so long to release them. Mattson Tomlin’s exhilarating time jumping story of mortal enemies does more than enough to keep up with Bermejo’s legendary work. A book like this puts publishers and creators on notice. This is how it’s done. This is how you make a statement to the world on why comic books matter. Despite it being limited to only three issues this is a time traveling book for the ages.
1.Conan The Barbarian
- By Crom you did it! You wrested the Conan license away from the evil clutches of Marvisney and showed the entire planet how to make a Hero Book. True, this Cimmerian isn’t like the heroes of neon tights and inter-galactic superpowers but make no mistake, this Barbarian slashed his way through those mangy curs to the top of the heap of the comic book world this year. Oh, what a joy to experience the true unbridled love that the creators of this comic most certainly have for this character and for them to have the courage to present him in all of his glory. In a pathetic world where nitwits, meager mealy mouthed toads and spindly cowards froth at the mouth with their idiotic claims of toxic masculinity, Titan Comics had the balls to say ‘Yeah, fuck that, here’s Conan’.
And yes, it wasn’t just their approach, Jim Zub’s writing and Roberto De La Torre’s art was as perfect a match for Conan as you could ask for. What an absolute triumph. If you’ve never read a Conan story before you could actually pick up the first arc of this book and know exactly what it’s like to read one of the best from the past as it feels just as authentic as any of Robert E. Howard’s offerings. Perhaps this is the future of comic books. Is it possible for a group of hyper excited artists and writers to somehow get the licenses from all of our favorite heroes and start them over for us? Can we join Conan on his pirate ship with Belit and do a hostile takeover of the Hulk, Spidey and Iron Man? Can we have Scott Snyder and Christian Ward storm DC's offices with guns blazing and take Batman from them?
Is this the way? Will there need to be a Comic Book Civil War? Drastic times call for drastic measures. Titan's 'Conan' reminded me how amazing it is to read a heroic tale. Yes, all genres can be found in comics but it's the heroes that really shine the most. It's the heroes that we can't find in our world, lifting buildings, shooting lasers out of their eyes, flying above us, it's these heroes that we find next to the staples of the pages of our favorite childhood titles that inspire us the most. And yes, we're adults and we have jobs and responsibilities now that go beyond these tales. Yet these tales remind us of what can be, not only in the world but within ourselves. They reminds us that life is a magical journey where anything can happen at any moment. The improbable victories over evil that we read in the pages of strong iconic heroes can somehow give us what we need to overcome the obstacles that we face in our lives.
And so as we turn the page on another year I see hope for a return to this glorified experience of reading comics that sit in our hands, not in our computers. I'm not sure how it will happen but I know it's possible.
“There is always a way, if the desire be coupled with courage,” - Conan
Boy, this one almost slipped through my fingers and my pull
list. Seems like it got zero press, zero previews and zero hype from comic book
hype machines. Can’t figure out why not, this creative team is the same one
that was behind the mind blowingly amazing ‘The
Many Deaths of Laila Starr’ which dropped a few years ago. That was legitimately
one of the best series of the year and one of the most unique stories I had
read in quite some time. It vaulted Ram V into the ‘writer of the moment’
conversation and predictably he was given a bunch of high profile DC books to
lord over.
As I cringed and anticipated a massive failure from his
transition into major hero books Ram shut me the hell up and put out an eye
poppingly great Aquaman masterpiece with Christian Ward entitled ‘Aquaman:Andromeda’. Aquaman. He knocked an Aquaman story out of the park. The exit velo
was off the charts. My goodness, that book was a triumph. I then followed Ram a
Dalai Lama Ding Dong down the DC Doo Doo trail into their cheap $3.99 books and
predictably he wasn’t able to transcend the titles he was assigned to. I’m completely
baffled by this. It keeps me up at night.
Why do creators crash and burn on the $3.99 Big Poo titles?
I mean, it doesn’t actually keep me up at night. Maybe when I feel my little
Princess staring deep into my soul at 4am which causes me to wake up and lift
the covers so she can burrow herself underneath them, maybe then, as I tossing
and turning to go back to bed I may think ‘why did Ram V’s Detective Comics run
feel like a cheese grater against my nuts?’
So as this team got back together to drop this series I’m
wondering why wasn’t this trumpeted from the roof tops? My initial thought was,
oh this looks bad. The logline and solicit made it seem like it was some sort
of cannibalistic horror comic that followed around some fatso who, I dunno, ate
something fancy and then ate someone fancy. I pulled it nonchalantly, it is
Boom! after all. Boom! Which is kinda like “Boom! You bought another wack ass
comic from us!” Granted, they have been getting better. A Vicious Circle is one
of the best books I read this past year even if it is taking them six months or
more to put out an issue.
Why didn’t Boom! go all in on this book? I did see them put
out some $3 preview book or something called an “Ashcan” a month before which
seemed superfluous. What’s an ashcan? Isn’t it supposed to be some mini comic
yet it’s not it’s normal sized but it only has 10 pages of material. Huh? Maybe
this was Boom! going all in on the creative team. Maybe it’s just that
something spectacular these days is easily swept under the rug of the Big Poo’s
major releases and incessant drama. The only thing we can do is stay vigilant
and pore over the weekly solicits with a fine tooth comb to make sure that
great books do not in fact fall through the cracks but get snatched up mightily
by the geeks at large so that publisher’s realized that greatness will in fact
be rewarded by the marketplace.
And, yes, this book is fucking great.
It’s so obvious right out the gate too. You’re just swept up
right into this world by Ram V’s supple word combinations and Filipe Andrade’s
distinct and visually satisfying artistic style. They’re building off their
Laila Starr premise by introducing another Deity/Demon who adopts a human form
to fulfill an ambition of theirs. This particular demon is called a ‘Rakshasa’,
which sounds like Shakshuka, a yummy Middle Eastern breakfast dish.
Has a punk
band adopted the name ‘Shakshuka’ yet? C’mon punkos, it’s perfect. The
alternative spelling of Shakshuka is Chakchouka which you know has to be the
name of new Star Wars character that Marvisney plans to introduce in their next
Disney Minus series. Maybe he’ll be an Ewok Warlord, I can see that. Bring back the Ewoks! C'mon Marvisney, you haven't ruined that memory yet, time to make a clean sweep of all my Star Wars happiness and turn it into misery.
At any a rate, a Rakshasha is a demon/ shapeshifter that can
take the form of an animal or human if it’s a male. If it’s a female Rakshasha
it can only take the form of a beautiful woman. Clearly female Rakshasha’s
think it’s a hoot to upload dating profiles to all the dating apps. I think I
just matched with a female Rakshasha. She’ll take three weeks to reply in 10
words or less to my well thought out, audience tested, flip yet emotionally
mature audio message. I’ll sit patiently and anxiously for a day biting my
fingernails, waiting for the moment to reply so as to appear busy and preoccupied
with my full work and dating schedule; all for naught. Damn, these fucking
Rakshasha’s got me all twisted! At least now, thanks to Ram V, I know that they’re
actual demons, and Hindu ones at that. Yeah. Indian babes have always looked at
me like I’m a plate of food that just fallen on the floor. I have zero chance
with them so this Rakshasha demon horde infiltrating my dating app preference
makes total sense.
Back to this spectacular comic. This particular demon has a
dream to become an Anthony Bourdain type celebrity and enlists some wayward
musty filmmaker dude to shoot the documentary of his journey into food.
Obviously some blood and guts occurs but it is downplayed enough that it doesn’t
turn the book into a gore fest which is what I was expecting when I saw the
solicits. This is just another magical premise by this creative duo and I hope
that Boom! or whomever signs them to a long term deal to continue pumping out
stories like this for the near future.
We can’t let books like this slip away into the comic book
memory holes. We have to support them. We have to make sure the marketplace
takes notice when real dyed in the wool artists come together to put out their
special brand of special. Is this going to be made into a show or a film, of
course it won’t. Will it smash records on social media shares, of course it won’t.
It’s a story that’s perfectly made for the medium of comics and it should be celebrated
as such. Boom! You did good! Pow! Right in the Kisser Ralph Kramden Good!
Rare Flavours: An under the radar smash from an Indy Publisher. Rare indeed.
