WONDER WOMAN #11-12 - Review & Evisceration

 

 

What the actual Eff to the Uck? Are you kidding me??? What is this tripe? What in William Moulton’s name is going on here??? Dude. Eff you DC. Like, seriously. Thanks but no thanks for taking a monumental dump on this comic book. A comic book that I was actually enjoying for the first time in almost a decade thanks to Tom King who was working on a solid narrative. A narrative that paired wonderfully with Daniel Sampere’s stunning art that was bringing this title back to readable and pull-able on a monthly basis.

 

I knew I was in trouble once I saw ‘Tie-In’ in the solicits. I didn’t think it would be too bad. I figured I’d have to endure a few pages of WTF that tracked to a crossover event I had zero interest in. Nope. Nothing could be further from the truth. This entire issue was hijacked by this Absolute Power bullshit. They said it was a tie-in. It was more like a tie-up. Actually no, it was more like a Tie Down on the floor with some dominatrix industry grade twine and the heel of a Stiletto in your nostril.

 

 

Right from page one it was a poop show: A poker game in the Watergate Hotel with Dubz, some, I dunno non-descript characters, Zatanna (I think), John Constantine (who I can’t stand) and, what the fuck is this? A monkey in a Sherlock Holmes outfit? Jeez. Like, how much of a coke and tranq addiction do the suits of DC have?

 

 

Let’s get something straight comic book making people. You are NOT allowed to have anthropomorphic characters anymore. That’s right. If you’re making a comic book that is off limits. The only comic that gets to use Anthropomorphic characters is Saga. Sah-Guh. They have monopolized that market, cornered the industry and staked their claim on that entire story device. Saga can do anything they want with that. A Panda Bear with a Tit on it’s ear. An Elephant dressed up like Wyatt Earp that has two butts and shoots naked Anime Babes out of its pistols. A Ferrett Pimp with three dicks that resembles Burt Reynolds; whatever they want! So if you think it’s cheeky to give me Detective Chimp playing poker, it’s not. 

 

I want to be clear that I do not blame Tom King for any of this. This is the DC Suits dressed as Furries with cutouts for their bungholes barging into Tom King's home and demanding he write the Watergate Poker Game that Zaslav dreamed up while taking orders from Klaus Schwab in Geneva.

 

My goodness, what the hell is going on in this comic? Shazam appears out of nowhere, an Iron Man looking flying robot with Elf Ears bursts through the hotel window of the poker game. Wait, why is it in the Watergate? Like, is this a commentary or something about, what? Scandal. Corruption. Government Shenanigans? Tricky Dicks? A Doctor Doom looking rip off without the Doom is flying around and – I can’t. I’m flipping through this comic like it’s a tattered ‘Creepshow’ comic without a cover in a 5 cent bin at a Garage Sale. This is not even close to being readable.

 

The low point of the entire DC Comics Publishing History may actually be this panel.

 

 

 

Like, Chimplock Holmes has had enough and he’s ready to take down the flying Elf Robot! Yeah, man, give it that Ooo Ooo Ooo War Cry! This is like my Ten Pound Terrier on her leash getting all worked up at a hundred pound Pit Bull while she’s on her walk; settle down babe, you’re as big as that thing’s head. I think DC Suits are back to doing acid again. It’s the only explanation I can think of as to why their non Black Label line has become so pooptastic. Like, clearly Marvel dudes like Lee, Kirby and Co. were high as a kite in the Sixties when they were pumping out comics. Yet they were obviously on Marijuana. Their stories were totally a:

 

 ‘Dude, wouldn’t it be wild if so and so did so and so and went into space and there’s like this other Space Dude doing Space things and they, like, Dude, meet another Space Dude who radiates him and turns him into a Super Space Dude and then takes him to another Dimension?’

 

Then they would laugh for several hours and make the comic. DC creators were clearly on psychedelics. They were seeing rainbows and technicolor animals goofily dancing in bubblegum panels with their goofy hero premises. You couldn’t really take DC seriously until Frank Miller wrote ‘The Dark Knight Returns’, then it was, ohh shit, wait a minute, is DC cool? But, yeah, I think DC is doing Plastic Man Acid Tabs again.

 

And who is this Amanda Waller chick? Is she the Elf Robot? I have no fucking idea, I had to CIA Data Suck/Google it. This is what they told me:

 

Though lacking superpowers, Amanda Waller is often portrayed as a ruthless, high-ranking government official who uses guile, political connections, and intimidation to achieve her goals, often in the name of national security.

 

So she’s Kamala Harris? I think if they just went with the actual Word Salad Kamala you’d have a winner of a crossover event. Maybe then DC could be unburdened by what has been, Lord knows they got burdens, lots of fucking burdens. I also would be down if the Absolute Power villain was called the Cackler, another Kamala type hero. Then the enraged psychopathic Chimp attack would make a lot more sense. I mean, could anything be more sinister and diabolical then Wonder Woman giving her best punch to the Cackler and then seeing this:

 

 

 

Another fucked up thing DC did is they came out with all these cool Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez Variant Covers that just haaaappened to be ready for the month that this crossover BS would hit the Dubz title along with every other main DC title.

 

 

Admittedly these throwback covers were fantastic and fun, I totally bit. So this dope cover is sitting in my comic rack for a while just giving me ‘You’re gonna love this’ vibes until of course I opened it and psychedelic vomit poured all over my living room. You had to figure they knew the insides were diseased so they pulled out these covers that were probably sitting around for a Defcon 1 situation such as this.

 

So I tossed this issue into my closet, like people toss traumatic events into the dark recesses of their psyche and turned to the next issue to – wait, what? Another fucking Heel in my Nostril Tie Down? There’s another entire issue full of this Absolute Poop Fest! Dude! What happened to continuity??? You had a great set up at the end of Issue 10, I’m all excited for what comes next then you ram a jagged razor in my ass and say spend $10 on two months worth of excrement! Look at this junk:

 

 

Now Damian/Robin is at a table with Dubz! Is this a new motif? Let’s put heroes in normal situations like tables and cafes and coffee shops? Look, if I’m a waiter and these Mofos walk into my Steakhouse and it’s not anywhere near Halloween I’m bolting out the fucking door. First of all, do you see any pockets on Dubz and Dame? No, no you don’t. Where’s their fucking money? Who’s paying for their steak tartare and oyster shooters? The Dude in the Trench? Who is the Dude in the Trench and how much has he spent on OnlyFans in the past week? 10, 20 thousand? I have no fucking idea who he is nor do I care. A few panels before the steakhouse scene he was doing this:

 

 

 

That’s exactly my reaction when I realized I dropped $5 for swill. My fancy chocolate bars that I get at Whole Foods cost $5. I could be gnawing on some amazing dark chocolate and raising my testosterone levels but no, I’m ingesting the fetid moronic thoughts of the dipshits who run the comic book arm of this media conglomerate that is sinking faster than Katy Perry’s Insta views.

 

 

Wait a minute, is there another one of these??? DUDE. Issue #13 is ALSO more of this Kamala garbage! Wait a minute, look at this, there’s 39 fucking issues that tie in to this cross it off your pull list event. 39! The losers at Warner Discovery want normal honest comic book loving geeks like you and me to drop 200 Bucks in a shit economy on this pathetic marketing angle. Warner Discovery is hemorrhaging money as their business model completely falls the fuck apart. I bet Zaslav took a break from dining on children in his Executive Suite to run into the DC Editor meeting and demand that heroes eat at tables like the rest of us eat!

 

Look at their stock price! Eight bucks a share, what a joke! It used to be $50. That’s what will happen to this comic book. It costs $5 today. In a few years it’ll be worth 75 cents on a ‘Make Me an Offer’ eBay page. Your stock price costs less than a 1:50 comic book shop exclusive variant from a shop that nobody has ever heard of or will ever visit, what with its inflated price based on nothing but manufactured artificial scarcity.

 

Wait, there’s some character in this series called Elongated Man? Elongated Man??? Does he use a Penis Pump? Is he called Penis Pump man in your perverted DC editorial meetings and then you changed it to Elongated Man to skate under the censors? How fucking high are you people? Did Pfizer pop into a meeting and urge you to drop a subliminal character on horny comic geeks all over the world? Are the Pfizer reps blotto also? Does some DC Comics Intern have to drop 25 pounds of coke onto the floor and line it from the elevator to Zaslav’s office? I wouldn’t be surprised.

 

 

 

I happily pick up poop every day from my little Princess. I love her with all my heart. If you’re dead set on smearing your titles with poop I wanna let you know that I’m here to help. Clearly my Princess’s poop is an upgrade over your story lines, just tell me where to send it. I’ll do it on one condition. That you change the name of this tie in event to Absolute Poop. I can hear the cackling in the air. It’s a hearty cackle. You’re welcome.

 

Rating: 1.0

Verdict: Unburden yourself from this Event.

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!

  

June '24 Reading Round Up

 

 

I pulled a piddly 9 comics in June. Nine. Nine times. I pulled Niiiiine Times. Yes, Rooney’s ‘Nine Times’ from Ferris Bueller is ringing in my head. 

 

 

That’s the first time in over 15 years (the two months of global shutdown notwithstanding) since I’ve been keeping track of my pulls that I went a month where I pulled in the single digits. I wish the country’s inflation problem was like my comic pulls; the price of good organic hummus wouldn’t make me cry anymore. Why just 9? I suppose I’m at the point where I see shit come down the pike and say to myself ‘Yeah, I ain’t falling for the banana in the tailpipe again’. I can tell when something that looks good is going to suck. Let me clarify: I can tell when a comic that looks good is going to suck, a woman…not so much. I can also tell when a comic that seems like it can be okay is not worth my dillies. 

 

 

With The Big Poo releasing drivel, decent books at least 5 or 6 bux a pop, really great prestige books around $9 a pop, and with new drops almost always being a limited series it’s been easier to give books that I normally might pull or continue to pull the Heisman. That said, at the halfway point of 2024 I’ve still pulled a little more than I did at this point last year yet last year was my lowest annual pull in 15 years as well. I would say it’s been a better year so far for the quality of comics that have come out versus last year. Image has kinda sucked but DSTLRY, Titan and Tom King may very well save the comic book industry if they keep on their current trajectory. Looking through July and August I don’t see much other than what I’m grabbing now. With that segue, here’s what I’ve been grabbing:

 

 

 

Christian Ward is not allowed to do any comics that are not in Prestige format ever again. I have gotten so used to seeing his amazing art plastered across enormous oversized pages that mushing it back into a standard comic size would be blasphemy. It seems like the Industry agrees with me as I feel like all of his recent books have been Super Sized. As expected, his work on this book is nothing short of absolutely fucking gorgeous. As for Tynion, I’m not really a huge fan. I know a lot of geeks geek out on his work and he’s regarded as one of the best by the publishers but he just doesn’t do it for me. The last two projects of his that I checked out was ‘Nice House on the Lake’ which started off wonderfully and by the midway point it had devolved into a wack CW Show inspired piece of poop. Same thing happened with ‘Department of Truth’. It started off with a bang/slap on the ass and spiraled into a whimpering fetal position of a book. The premise of Spectregraph is immensely strong and they’ve set it up perfectly. It remains to be seen if Tynion can handle maintaining the story arc. We know that Ward is going bring the ruffneck bizness to the art. Maybe that’ll jolt Tynion into actually finishing what he started. Otherwise, this is another solid release by DSTLRY which is fast becoming the Jewel of the Industry for the non Tights & Capes titles. 9.5

 

 

 

This 3 Issue Jock-O-Rama series ended with a resounding thud and put a stink on the first ever initial release from DSTLRY. Since this offering they have been slaying the marketplace with their spectacular books so they haven’t looked back. As I’ve said before these 3 issue Prestige Format releases that cost a grip are hard for the consumer to navigate through. As long as the premise and presentation of the initial issue grabs you, you’ll be on board for Issue 2, where it seems like more often than not that it goes off the rails; which it did in this series. Then you’re left wondering, well, I’ve already dropped $16-18 and there’s only one issue left, might as well get it, maybe it will have a great ending. In this case it didn’t. In this case it turned into a bumbling disconnected plot of Mommy & Daddy issues, Zombies, intergalactic politics and general poop on a page dialogue. They’re in a ship. They’re in a different ship. They want to come back to this ship. Nobody’s on the ship. We’re running from this ship. The other ship is running from something else. Now he’s on the ship. Zombies everywhere. Boom Bam. Zombies. Ships. Space. There, I just saved you $9, no need to get this now. Man, finishing a Sucky 3 Issue Prestige really punches you in the stomach. Mark Simpson, AKA Jock, really dropped the ball on this one. Shame. His ‘One Dark Knight’ was one of the best of 2022 so naturally one would assume he would knock this out of the park too. Nope. Your $27 be Gone. And Nelson is going Ha Ha to you like your name was Bart Simpson. 5.6

 

 

 

If someone rushed into my home and said ‘Quick, the Zombie Apocalypse is here, they’re minutes away and they’re mangling everyone in their path. You only have time to take your Dog and 3 comic books with you’, I’d say ‘Well, is that like, 3 comics I’d have to read over and over or could I keep pulling them?’. They’d say ‘What?’ I’d say, ‘Like, could I keep pulling the issues so I could continue following the story while I flee the Zombies’ They’d say ‘Well, of course your LCS is being relocated to within a safe enclosed fortress so they’ll still be able to distribute media to its customers’. I’d then rush over to my rack and take Conan the Barbarian first without question. I’d probably take Love Everlasting next and debate whether I should take Helen of Wyndhorn or fucking Saga. There’d be nothing worse if BKV still took 6 month hiatuses during a Zombie Apocalypse. Dude. You’re in a barbed wire enclosed fortress with Fiona, y’all should be pumping out Saga bi-weekly my guy. Anyway, this Conan comic is the fucking best. 9.8

 

 

 

After I stirred up all this Hullabaloo on LOCG (League of Comic Geeks) by proclaiming Ultimate Spidey 4 a Boring AF comic since it was nothing more than a dinner conversation, I had a stink eye prepped for this issue as the solicit told me it was going to be another one of those Backstory Bingos that publishers/creators use to deal with Artist hiatuses. I’m okay with a Backstory Bingo/Tangential Issue or Episode for a secondary character, but it has to be memorable AF - clearly my feeling of this book requires multiple AFs. I always use the recent example of the episode in the final season of Ted Lasso that was dedicated solely to Beard. He leaves Ted and goes on this wild and wacky adventure throughout London; it was fantastic and in a way I remember that episode more than I do the others of that season. So it can be done, but man, you better come wit dat ruffneck bidness if you’re going to do it. Did Hickman bring a ‘Beard’ issue to the table? Not really. It was a solid and interesting Backstory Bingo and Hickman’s such a fucking great writer he can make anything intriguing. Yet at the end of the page count, it’s still a Backstory Bingo Bonanza that could have been dripped in with subsequent issues that moved the story forward. 

 

If you ask me, Hickman could have taken the 2 months off that he used for Issue 4 & 5 of this book and, oh, I dunno, FINISHED THE BLACK MONDAY MURDERS!!! Hicksy! WTF?!?! That book is still hanging in the ether! Finish that shit! It was amazing! And while you’re at it FINISH THE DYING AND THE DEAD!!!! WTF is wrong with you??? I feel like a nerdy chick who just got picked up, banged and dumped by Brian Wood at a Comic Con. Get to work on those Dammit! Yeesh. Man, Issue 6 of this book better be the Shizzznit or I’m dropping this like a booger on a plane seat. 6.6

 

 

 

 

I am really loving this Dubz run. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Best Dubz run since the New 52 dropped out of the sky and Azzarello and Chiang absolutely destroyed this book with their combined genius. I do have a bone to pick here though. So at the end of last issue Dubz heroically overcomes her captor’s ‘Rope of Lies’ or whatever and is able to slough off her restraints and reach his neck with her hands. Next thing we see is that she’s in a prison cell in the dark with no windows. Umm, how did we get here? This is the same Dubz from a previous issue that was taking on the entire U.S. Army and was throwing tanks around like I throw doggie toys around my home. This is the same Dubz who took the blow of half of the Washington Monument being throttled on top of her, and yet, she couldn’t subdue a bunch of soldiers in a room, nor escape a guarded cell for months??? She had to eat a rat? Really? Then lost her mind and befriended another rat? 

 

Of course she ate the male rat and befriended the female rat who was its mate. I bet the male rat was a bumbling husband who had a gut and drank beer and had no respect from his rat wife but since she was so noble and had a heart she found it in herself to love the animal with no brains cuz that’s what females do when it comes to husbands since all husbands are Al Bundyesque idiots. You think I wouldn’t pick up on that King? C’mon dude. I’ll forgive you for the fact that you felt the need for some Steve McQueen ‘Papillon’ shit but let’s get back to main narrative. From the cliffhanger I can tell you’re ready to do so, so, bring the ruckus and dat roughneck Dubz bizness. 7.7

 

 

 

The Next Great book out of Image may have finally dropped after a long run of mediocrity and mnyeh from the Publisher that once could do no wrong. With Falling in Love On the Path to Hell Duggan & Co. have concocted a premise so bonkers and yet somehow so perfect that there’s almost no way you won’t be coming back for seconds. Sometimes reckless passion executed with acute simplicity is all you need to deliver something great. When creators go ‘Hey, what if we did this?’ and then laugh and get wildly excited about it at the same time it provides the breeding ground for creating a piece that people will never forget it. No need for me to break down their premise or explain the elements. Just go grab the first issue of this if you can and remind yourself why you love comic books so much. 9.1

 

 

 

 

Umm, this Masterpiece issue was kinda crappy and a general eye roll/flip ahead. Not sure why other than it felt like Bendis was trying to be too cool with the dialogue and character development. Maybe the premise of this book was wack from the get go. A billionaire who supposedly murdered a husband and wife who were thieves that stole from him is now after their kid because, she’s their kid. I think it’s a commentary on how the super rich are so narcissistic that whatever they want is justified, even if it means killing a kid. The kid's assembling a team with an array of cool spy type abilities was really neato, but maybe this premise needed to stay in the oven for a bit longer. It feels soft in the middle. Just one issue to go which feels a little wonky since there seems to be a lot of unresolved shit to tie up after these 5 issues. This was fun for a bit but it’s nowhere near as amazing as ‘Pearl’, Bendis’ last must read book. Still, give me a Bendis/Maleev half baked premise over The Big Poo’s $3.99 jam packed advertisements any day of the week. 7.0

 

 

Great Comics come and go pretty fast. If you don't stop reading caca Tie-In Events from Marvel and DC you might miss them - Pherris Schmuckler