Batman: The Dark Knight Rises...Again & Again & Again etc.

 

What’s your favorite TV Show? Think of it. Now, think of it being everywhere at once. Think of there being multiple iterations of your show with different characters and different takes of the show going on all at the same time while you’re watching the main show. It’d be ridiculous right? Let’s take, I dunno, Breaking Bad, one of the greatest TV shows in the history of the Universe. What if, while you were watching Season 2 or 3 all of a sudden they said ‘Hey, tune in after the show for ‘The Maniacal Heisenberg’ a new show where Walt stalks the back alleys of New Mexico on the hunt for someone who is copycatting his signature blue meth. 

 

                 

What if they said during that show they said, premiering on Netflix next week ‘Jesse & Friends’ , it tells the tale of Jesse and his best buds before he met Walt. Then, while watching Cartoon Network Adult Swim you see an ad for ‘Wow. Walt. Wild’ a new anime style show about Walter White doing Science Guy things in his Science Class while he was also being Heisenberg. Then, while watching football on Sunday, Fox advertised ‘Walter: A Brutal Christmas’ a new show that tells the untold holiday tale of the one and only Walter White, and all of this is going on while you’re still watching the initial show of Breaking Bad and have no idea how it ends at this point. It’d be stupid. It’d be overkill. You’d wonder, why are they doing this? Let me watch the show in peace. They don’t release a new season of Stranger Things and then tell you to tune in to other Stranger Things shows do they?

Now, you may know where I’m going with this and you may say, well, comics aren’t like TV Shows. I would counter with, no they aren’t but, in a way they kind of can be. I mean, if I’m reading a great hero comic and it’s really hitting all the right notes for me I don’t need another one do I? Well, the Big 2 would say otherwise. DC would say, dude, eff you, here; take a dozen more and, wait, open wide, yeah, here’s like 3 or 4 that go down your throat and, oopsie, we just shoved a couple up your anus. Welcome to Batman Comics in 2025. 

 

                       

 

In fact, welcome to entertainment in 2025. If anything works, if there is any ‘IP’ that is considered valuable or potentially valuable they will replicate it until it can’t be replicated anymore and one could argue that it can always be replicated. We are in the thick of the ‘Just make another one’ philosophy that every company on the planet is implementing without fail. No risks can be taken, shareholders must be happy, bottom lines must be met. That’s obviously a deeply cynical take but as far as I am personally concerned it’s how I feel right now when it comes to anything in comic books, especially hero comics and especially my favorite hero of all time:

I’ve reached the point with Bats where, and I hate saying this, but I’m over it. It’s been too much. There is, too much. I’ve tried to cut down and focus on just a few but even then it’s become an unenjoyable pursuit. Let’s take Absolute Batman, the premiere ‘everyone’s gotta have it’ Bat book on the shelves right now written by Mr Bats himself, Scott Snyder.  I’m trying to figure out why I’m not in love with Abs Bats. I think a lot has to do with Bruce Wayne looking like an Anime Yo Let’s Lift Bro. I also think I’m suffering, and perhaps you are too, from ‘alternate imagined universe’ burn out. Where characters are interchangeable, attributes are whatever they dream up and there’s no accountability to canon. Now, Snyder is one of the best to ever do it and he’s definitely writing the shit out of this series. Nick Dragotta's art has also been top notch. I think this is for sure the best Bat Book out there. So why am I not gushing profusely over this series like everyone else? There’s no stakes. In all these alt Uni’s there ultimately no stakes for anyone because it’s just an alt uni that will cease to exist once the series does. So whenever they decide to end this it will also, in all likelihood, end these characters and you’ll return to your normally scheduled Bat Book where whatever’s happening in the main series is technically the one that will hold the most weight. Looking ahead I see a Joker that looks like a spiky lizard that Jock will be drawing. Okay, that’s a must pull but I’m pulling it out of curiosity not out of joy. I find myself going ‘ooh that’s cool’ a lot in this series but I’m not emotionally invested and that’s a big problem. If anything can happen to the character with zero consequences and canon is irrelevant then it's just a petri dish experiment.

I think that’s a big problem with a lot of these stories, they exist in their own vacuums and whatever happens in these stories ostensibly stays in these stories. There’s no accountability for whatever happens to Bats in these books. They just released the second installment of the ‘Long Dark Knight’ which is a sort of an origin story of Bats set in the 30s with all the vernacular of the time. The first one they did last year was amazing, but the new one? It feels rehashed, it feels a bit stale, it feels like a cheaper version of the original. It feels like they asked chatgpt for every single unique phrase and slang that was uttered in the 20s and 30s and are peppering the dialogue with one every chance they get. It’s like a gut wrenching version of Groundhog Day with these Bat Books where they try to make the same thing from a successful run and it never feels the same. You can’t just fall in the snow with Andie McDowell and make snow angels every night and every month over and over and not have it feel forced and awkward.  

 

           

 

Now we have the new Batman by Fraction. Oy vey. I mean, I absolutely love Matt Fraction. I would consider him one the Top 5 Best Comic Book Writers of the past 10-15 years. Of course I’m going to be interested in his take on Bats, which sucks! Why? Because I don’t need him to write Bats right now, I’ve got plenty of Bat goodness on my plate, it’s overkill. It’s like ‘Wow this pizza is amazing’, oh you like it? Here, let me just drop a whole other pie right on top of this one, now eat up! I’m finishing up Mark Waid’s run on Bats & Robin Year One which has been delightful and it’s like okay now I have two pizzas stacked on top of each other and someone sent a whole other pie to my place. So I’m gonna throw that in the freezer and deal with it at another time. I sit down, stuffed to the gills with pizza, and I read an ad that says ‘Oh hey, we’re making a pizza right now, want one?’.

Matt Fraction writing Batman should be an event. It should be the wow moment of the year. Instead it’s just another pile on of Bats on already out of control Jenga pile of comics. I read that Fraction first issue, you know what it was? Unnecessary. There was no reason whatsoever for that story to exist. It was useless. It could have been added into one of the dozens of Batman anthologies they put out all the time. It felt like such a waste of talent, time and money. Who’s to blame? I have no idea. Is everyone in the Big 2 in so much debt that you have just pump out your best characters in as many books as possible to make rent? Are DC execs deep in sports gambling doo doo like millions of other people?

It’s just yucky and sad and ultimately, when you have so much of the same thing it cheapens the experience and that’s what it feels like: cheap. So for 2026 I'm going to be dropping all Absolute Books and it's going to have to be one the biggest wow drops ever to get me to open a Bat Book for a while. 

Aren’t you glad you read this post??? So happy, merry and joyful. Hey, I had to get it out, had to vent, whether it’s heard or not, it had to be said.

Here’s what I’ve been reading, it ain’t much. I should've posted this months ago but life got in the way...

 

Is this turning into a soonzefest? Ya, probably. This has been a delightful series by the Powerhouse Waid & Samnee team but, ehhh, the story is getting stale. I could look at Chris Samnee draw toilets all day long, he’s that good, but the overall tone and muddied brown and grey color palette that seems to be everywhere you look in this series is beginning to feel like a bummer. It’s rough enough in LA, I don’t need to open a comic book that looks like most of the streets around here. Feels like this should have been either a 6 or 8 issue series; twelve is kinda pushing it. When I look at the solicits hoping to see that a series is ending soon, it’s never a good sign. This is why Clayface stories usually end up sucking. When a villain can just look like anybody he wants it lends itself to cheap writing and staid plot developments since, well, ooh, this character can become anybody and move the plot forward if I get stuck or bogged down in blah middle acts. With a bunch of Bat Books now on the shelves that are way more exciting along with, oh I dunno, 758 that are blah or just suck, it’s time to put this bed already. I see a lot of comic book geeks clamoring for a season 2 as this book winds down. I wouldn’t be opposed to it but make it 6 tops. Honestly the real thing that needs to happen is somebody needs to get These dudes need to get back on Daredevil somehow. It’s where they belong. 

Update: So I just read the finale. It was sweet, nostalgic, classic Bats with a few awww moments. A truly enjoyable read. No regrets following this to the end. Now, I'm sure DC is readying a whole new 12 issues of this which is all well and good but I will not be joining them if they do. Get back on Daredevil you two! It sucks! It's been sucking. C'mon, make the dirty deal with the Mouse.

 

What a shit show. What a disastrous punch to my comic book face. That’s what reading this felt like. I sat down excited to actually read a new series for the first time in forever. I was praying that someone would rescue 2025 with a spectacular book, this fit the bill. I saved it for that special moment when I had the doggies napping and the world all to myself. I opened this comic and a fist of some hot pseudo anime babe drenched in blood flew from between the pages and punched me in the fucking face. Jae Lee. Genius. Variant covers suck. Jae Lee variant covers don’t. Gerry Duggan. Doing yeoman’s work on one of the best, if not wackiest, series of the year ‘Falling in Love on the Pathway to Hell’; monster combo. Well, these two didn’t just poop the bed, they had a fireball come out their bunghole and set the whole bedroom on fire. I can see how somebody might say ‘Oh this is a rock ‘em sock ‘em frenetic tale that grabs you and doesn’t let up. Strap yourselves in and -‘ No. No strapping in. It’s a bloody mess. Something about two families coming through a portal millennia ago and fighting, a truce, a kid exchange, elve ears  and some Male Stripper Bill Dickcock. Umm, no. Looks amazing. Still a mess. Heads are flying. Arms are being sliced off. People appear out of nowhere, get killed, next. Some ridiculous dialogue including ‘You have a date with the back of my hand'  'You have a date with a dentist arrgggh’ uggh. Couldn’t even finish it. I think the culture of comic books and entertainment in general has moved past senastionalized hyper violence. I believe it had its place. Tarantino came in at the perfect juncture and capitalized on it with his distinct brand of genius and craft. He drew from Asian Cinema that had not yet reached the mass awareness in the States and took it to another level. It inspired many to continue, copy and evolve his vision to the point that we’re so desensitized to it, it’s become a crutch for lazy writing and artists in general. Duggan pulls a fast one though, he cliffhangers the audience with the last page, it was all a hallucination, drugs, who knows as the pink moon sits in the sky. Dammit. As awful as this year has been for comics I’m gonna have to give this another pull. I’m halfway between this ending after I get up or this ending after another issue. 5.0

Update: I just finished the second issue…bleccchhh. C’mon guys, wtf? If you got rid of the text bubbles, which you probably should since there’s no coherent plot, this book is just a miss mosh of rail thin babes long legged babes miraculously avoiding bullets and the like while kicking dudes in the head amidst the copious pantie shots. Oh yeah, and let’s throw in some more decapitated heads. Trash. So disappointing. Me pulling another issue of this waste of my money? This ends today!

A backstory bingo issue that stopped the hurdling momentum of recent issues which seemed to be coming to a climactic boiling point of a resolution. Yup, let’s side step and tell you why this guy we just introduced in the climactic cliff hanger moment of the last issue is so important and why the cliff hanger moment was such a major cliff hanger with all sorts of drama. Now don’t get me wrong, this was a delightful issue that filled out the character of Asami a lot more and did provide a barrel of TNT to the moment we just left in the previous issue. That said, if I wanted to read a comic about the plight of female Samurai during pre-modern Japan I would happily do so but maybe, I dunno, finish this one first and then tease us with the ‘Life of Asami’ book in the back matter of your finale. The problem here is that the main trio of characters have nothing to do with this blast from Asami’s past so this issue is more of a distraction then it is necessary. Sound like social media. I’m gonna call this the Instasami Issue. Not going anywhere but let’s get back to our regularly scheduled wild premise mmkay?

 

Hayden Sherman and Jordie Bellaire are putting in work these past few Abs Dubz issues. The visuals for this book have soared into the stratosphere of comic book nirvana and every panel is becoming a feast for the eyes. It’s giving New 52 Batwoman by J.H. Williams/W. Haden Blackman energy. My goodness that book was amazing, I still feel jilted by DC ending it so abrutly because they didn’t want Bat Dubz marrying a chick; so ridiculous. Anyway, the paneling in these issues really reminds me of those interconnected layouts and it’s bringing me back. Wish they would put this book in a Prestige Format. I feel like they may have missed the boat on that by not releasing all the ‘Absolute’ books in Prestige Format, but what do I know other than I would’ve coughed up the extra 2-3 dillies per issue for the eye candy. Also, I’m not sold on this Thomson's wackadoodle plot set in a Minotaur Maze with fish people and a chick villain who really needs a spa day. That said, Abs Dubz has been the best DC book of the year in my humble opinion so they could run around a maze, an escape room or a cheesecake factory and I'd be knee deep in it.

Oh no! Not another one of these Titan Licensed Characters Smorgasbords! Uggh. I thought this was a stand along story not Titan mushing all of the characters it now owns from Robert E. Howard or whatever and throwing them together in a disjointed mist mosh of a plot that spans millennia and locales. I fell for this once before, I’ve already memory holed the previous iteration of this major event. Well, I’m not falling for the banana in the tailpipe again or perhaps the Conan Sword in the Victorian Library again. Who thinks this is a good idea? Just throwing a bunch of characters that have nothing to do with each other in a story. I mean, if you had the rights to Snoopy why not add him? Isn’t Popeye in the public domain now? Why not add Popeye and Steamboat Mickey and Ralph Kramden from the Honeymooners. I don’t know what the point is. I suppose it’s to excite you about characters you wouldn’t necessarily be excited about so you could potentially buy their titles as well. Oy. Titan’s main Conan title is finally picking up some steam again after a lull, I suggest sticking to that and avoiding all their mish mosh books. They also just came out with a colorized SSOC (Savage Sword of Conan) which feels…silly? The appeal of SSOC is it’s gritty black and white newsprint feel. C’mon Titan, stop trying to make new fan dangled cookie flavors like lingonberry buckwheat crunch with white chocolate and mustard greens, just stick to chocolate chip. Simplicity is the new complexity in comic books.

I’m grasping at straws these days desperately looking for great new comics that are starting now before the year ends. My ‘Best Comics of 2025’ list doesn’t even have 10 contenders on it. What a horrible year. I figured why the hell not with this Spidey book and it turned out to be a why the hell did you make this book in the first place. Seriously? I mean, why? What’s the point of this book? Spidey can’t decide if he wants Gwen or MJ? Is it really that hard of a choice? So you’ve reduced Peter Parker to an Archie comic dillemma, is it Betty or Veronica, awesome, great job. This felt like it was meant for 5-8 year olds who have never read Spiderman before. Are kids reading comic books? Like, actual comics? Or are they just downloading them on their iPads? I saw a kid the other day get out of a SUV with two phones and an iPad, we are doomed. The ultimate silliness of this book is when the hot blonde stealing a book from a library turns into a demon with a tail and wings and flies away . Dude, this happens like allll the time in LA, it’s not that big of a deal. Spidey, torn. Yeah, I’m torn whether I should keep this or put it in a cardboard box outside with most of my other comics I’ve bought this year and label it free. Trash.

 

The Unwritten by Mike Carey and Peter Gross is without question one of the greatest comic book series ever written in the entire history of the genre. It transcended the medium and made mincemeat of the more popular Harry Potter story with its own brand of boy becomes legend. If you have not read The Unwritten you are depriving yourself of a sublime feast for the mind and a comic book experience you will not soon forget. When I saw this Author book on the solicits I immediately thought of the Unwritten, same kinda vibe. Unfortunately, this one just plain sucks. Again, I’m not sure if editors are actively looking to dumb down plots and dialogue as they are in TV. TV writers, and this is real, are being told to dumb down plots and write dialogue that continually reiterates the story developments so that the millions of people who watch TV on their phones can keep up with what’s going on since they rarely watch more than 5-10 minutes at a time  The dialogue and exposition here in this book is so on the nose it felt like I was being read to as if I was a five year old sitting on a library carpet being read to by a high pitched librarian showing me the book as she turns the pages. I really had high hopes for this one. It’s like dating one of the greatest women of your life and then someone comes along in your later years who looks like her and talks like her but you soon realize she’s a complete phony. I tossed this drivel and began drunk texting Mike Carey to let me come over.

If you're going to have a grumpy, unlikable and unattractive main character for your story you're really going to need to do some heavy lifting around the supporting cast and plot development that will slowly connect your audience with your lead. You're going to have to make them root for the whiny troll somehow After almost a year of issues I don't think it's happened yet in this series and I'm officially checking out. I have zero fucks to give for Theresa the lead 'Ooh I think I have psychic abilities' chick. I also was generally disappointed in the tarot aspect of this book, I thought it would be a little bit more sophisticated. I don't think Lemire has any real knowledge of the Tarot and the whole 'I look at the cards and then get transported in my mind to some alternate dimension regardless of what the cards are' is super lame. Now we get this subplot of a psychic mystic loser cartel who are trying to sabotage the lead troll and it's officially a sillyfest. I see my future and it has no pulls of this sad uninspiring tale.

 

Yay Comics! So fun! Oy vey. I know this is about the time that I pop out a best of the year post but that's going to have to wait. Especially since I'm going to have to squeeze whatever drops of juice I can out of the three month old moldy lemon that was this year of comic books.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season and received gifts of trade paperbacks of comics from long ago that will remind you that, yes, comic books were once the best thing ever.

July '24 Reading Round Up - AI COMICS!

 

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".

 

Lumi? Seriously? Sounds like a cheap as fuck lamp company. Like I just bought some crappy $10 book light from Amazon that doesn’t work, I bet it’s a subsidiary of Lumi. Lumi is the name of some Vegan Café that opens in Silverlake and closes in 3 months due to shitty Yelp reviews. Lumi is the name of that Goth chick you matched with who has way too many tats but a super cute face that ropes you in until she literally ties you up with ropes in her Subaru and puts a ballgag in your mouth. Look, there’s nothing to be done about this app, it was an inevitability. If it wasn’t Colin Kaepernick it would’ve been Ryan Fitzpatrick or Andrew Luck or some other former retired QB. We’re already seeing AI Covers being unknowingly plastered on books by ignorant publishers. I’m sure the Big Poo are looking into how they can leverage AI comics and replace their entire creative team. At this point it would probably be an improvement.

 

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 a  fairy-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.

 

Happy Reading!

  

THE BEST COMIC BOOKS OF 2023

 

                  THE BEST COMIC BOOKS OF 2023

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

 

Mark Millar's Comic Book Plan

 

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:

 

Thinking Critical 

 

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

 

Happy New Year - Issac