ABSOLUTE BATMAN #1 - Review

DC Comic Book Suits meet once a week in a darkened conference room in Burbank lit only by candlelight. The room reeks of repressed trauma, Chex Mix and Febreze ‘Linen & Sky’. Standing behind the chairs of the Suits are hooded figures who wield three foot steel pokers and week-old bagels from the Bagel Broker in LA (in other words, the hardest known material on Planet Earth). A hologram of Disney’s Stock Price dances in the middle of the coference table and placards showing the gross earnings of all of the MCU movies are placed in front of each of the suits.

 

 

This purpose of this weekly meeting is twofold: One, to humiliate and physically abuse the DC Comic Book Suits so they fear for their life from the Dark Lord that they worship. The other is to come up with at least 40-50 new names for Batman Titles that will soon be paired up with Batman Ideas that are spit out by the dozens from the asscheeks of a sloth that resides in their Dark Lord’s lair…in Brentwood.

 

 

Thesaurus’s are not allowed at this meeting, nor are phones. Suits must just come up with Batman Titles on their own, inspired by their own Bat Lunacy and need to maintain their Equinox gym memberships. When the Hooded Figures start poking the Suits, the Suits begin to whinge and wheedle; they roar out the names of possible new Bat Books one by one:

 

Unadulterated Batman!

 

Keto Batman!

 

The Dark Nighty Nite!

 

Peppermint Batty!

 

Murky Gloomy Dingy Batman!

 

The Golden At-Batman!

 

Cardi B-ats!

 

Batman: Folie a Trois!

 

Bat-a-Bar: The Last Bat-Bender!

 

And on and on and on it goes, for hours on end. Conservative estimates predict that by 2026 there will be 400 Batman Comics released by DC every year, those are conservative estimates. As it stands we get about 100 or so, clearly we’re in the lean years of being Batman fans, hang in there guys! This may all seem like pure sarcasm to you, but, is it? There’s a Bat Werewolf comic that’s coming out along with a Batman the Barbarian one. We’ve had a Bat Vampire, Bat Zombie, Bat Knight from the Middle Ages and a soon to be Bat Chef on the show ‘Chopped’ where he opens up Bat-skets of oddly paired food items.

 

 

In this particular comic they settled on ‘Absolute’. How you ask? Well, word has it that after a few mounds of coke and a little meth they decied that every Hero in the DC Universe should get an Absolute title. Then a fight broke out over the merits of an ‘Absolute Martian Manhunter’ series. It was started by a DC Suit, who was naked by this time, and who was sporting a large Plastic Man tat on his left butt cheek. This guy apparently assaulted the DC Suit who was pining for an Absolute Martian Manhunter. The Naked Plastic Man Dude had to be restrained and all he kept bellowing was ‘J’onn J’onzz is the stupidest fucking name for a fucking character ever!’.

 

I’d have to agree with Plastic Suit on that one, I mean, J’onn J’onnzz should either be the name of a Mumble Rapper, a forgotten member of Color Me Badd or a fancy cologne from Chanel. Anyway, looks like all we’re getting is Absolute Bats, Supes & Dubz. I picked up Bats simply because, well, Scott Snyder. I feel for ya Scott. You were writing the best Batman run in the past, oh, I dunno, 25 years maybe, when you started at the New 52 back in 2011. I mean, that Court of Owls story line was bananas. It had been years since I was so amped for a monthly. That, coupled with Azzarello and Chiang’s Wonder Woman run was a major part of the halcyon days of me buying comic books. I was pulling like 25-30 a month, it was heaven.

 

Well, shit ended weird for Snyder by the time he was on the Mr Bloom story line in 2015. Don’t get me wrong, this new villain was dope but, it felt like, DC meddled. The whole story had a bizarre ending, it didn’t feel like it came from Snyder and next thing you know he was unceremoniously replaced by someone else. I couldn’t even tell you who but I remember it sucking balls after Synder. What happened? Don’t know. Yet I got the feeling like DC felt bad about the way things went down and gave him this Wham Bam Slam ‘Dark Nights: Metal’ Mega Event to smooth things over with him. The Mega Event was Mega Boring and Mega DC Corny AF Character Heavy; it kinda soured me on Snyder a bit. I feel like that’s what they’ve been doing since the Bloom fiasco; trying to give Snyder stuff to make up for ruining his stellar run on Bats. Unfortunately, nothing has come close to that four year run of his.

 

Something similar to this happened to me in my Stand-Up Career. I was working with this Music Producer and making a Comedy Music album with like, real bonafide dance tracks and poignant lyrics. It was going to be huge; he knew people. I began writing a new One Man Show that we were going to record live over a few performances and intersperse the material throughout the album along with sketches. I ended up creating one of the best shows I had put together in years, a Bat-Snyderian-Owl show for the ages. The tracks were ready, the sketches were ready, all we had to do was record the show.

 

Now, this producer was eccentric and flighty as most Producers in LA are. After securing a great venue in Hollywood I let him know that he needed to go down and check out the audio set-up before the show to make sure everything would synch up with whatever he was planning to use to record the shows. He said, sure man, no problem. Days and weeks passed, the show was getting closer and Producer Dude had yet to go down to the venue. Reassurances. Eye rolls. It’s fine. Days to the show. No Producer Dude at venue. Dude. Go. To. The. Venue. Going tomorrow. No Producer Dude at venue. Day of shows. Okay, get there early. Sure. One hour to show time. No Producer Dude at venue. Crowd filing in. Producer Dude finally shows up with some equipment. We’ve had zero sound check. He says, chill, it’s fine.

 

I do my shows. I don’t care how arrogant this sounds but I murdered them. Murdered. Both shows. Hurt them. 

 

I knew the album was going to be an enormous success. Hmm, which canyon should I live in? Laurel, Nichols, Coldwater, hmmm.

So, Producer Dude, how’d it come out?

 

It didn’t.

 

Not one second.

 

His set up failed. Nothing was recorded. From that night on Producer Dude would get me lots of performance opportunities to recreate the shows that I did. It was his way of saying sorry and also his way of making good on the project. Every show after the original ones were ‘Dark Nights:Metal’ shows; they were all blah. The project was dead.

 

Now, that’s on me as well. I needed to find whatever was within me to have another murderous show, but I didn’t. Why? Because once something is ruined it’s really hard to put back together. Sometimes you can. Most of the time you can’t. So before I even looked at one page of Absolutely Bat-A-Tat-Tat-Man I knew, I knew that it wasn’t going to be as great as New 52 Snyder. Sure I wanted it to be, but, the odds were slim to none. Well, I was right.

 

First, I'm not sure what to think about this cover. Bats is Yoke AF. Bats does Legs five times a week. Bats is really an Armenian from Glendale and his new Batmobile is probably going to be just a White Mercedes E-Class with a Bat Logo on it. Speaking of the logo, it looks like Feds redacted the actual Bat logo. Is this version of Bats looking wack AF? Absolutely! Maybe that's why it's Absolute Batman. Maybe they should've called Absolutely Batman and it could've been the two Absolutely Fabulous Ladies running around Gotham in Bat Outfits fighting the crimes of people who don't get sarcasm.

The comic feels a lot like 'The Dark Knight Returns', there's a bunch of newscasters on TV panels that reminds me of that vibe. Maybe that's what they were going for, an 80s vibe. That might explain why Bruce Wayne looks like Akira. Tell me this isn't Akira from the legendary Akira Anime Film of the 80s:

Now don't get me wrong I would fucking love a Bat-Kira comic but this feels just like a tease not a promise. Plus, throw in the fact that Bat-Kira is running around in a bad ass motorcycle like Akira and it's clear that an Inspector Gadget Cameo is forthcoming in the soon to be released issues.

Next we have the Bowling Ball Crime Family, a family that has most of their head covered in a bowling ball. I'm not sure which DC Suit has a fantasy about a babe coming out of a pool in a bikini with a bowling ball on her head but it made it into this comic book.

 

 

 

I suppose I would be intrigued and disgusted by an underground brothel called 'Bang & Bowl' where you could enjoy the company of a babe and then see if you could toss her down a lane for a spare afterward. Has an exchange like this ever happened where it was a literal reference:

 

 

Bang & Bowler #1: How was Sapphire?

Bang & Bowler #2: Dude, she was a gutterball. 

Word is Harvey Weinstein and Oprah bowled girls all the time in Haiti. I will say this, the action sequence at the end of the book was fan-fucking-tastic. A+. Wow. One of the better Bat Beatdowns you'll see. Overall, this comic was what I expected, nothing spectacular yet enjoyable enough to keep grabbing future ishes. There's been a slew of reprints already and the variant cover list is up to 46. 46! Forty Six Fucking Covers. This is like the Beatles 'Yesterday' of comic books. If I see one of those blank covers at my comic book shop I plan on picking up so I can have a cool comic book artist sketch the Absolute Bat Dude on my blank cover. There will be one important detail that they'll have to incorporate into the cover. There's going to have to be a text bubble over Bats that says "You lift Bro?".

 

 

RATING: 7.5

VERDICT: Pull, Bang & Bowl

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!