CLEAR #2 - Review

 

Second dates are tough. It’s challenging to show up again and reaffirm to someone ‘Hey, I’m great’. See, the first date is actually easy, it can be a performance; it’s a slice of you. You get to carefully choose what to show and how to show it; a tactile manicure of your existence deftly presented to a prospective…whatever: lover, fling, validation, ego boost – up to you. It’s why Social Media is such a complete and utter disaster to the human race. Everyone is projecting their carefully manicured existence to the world which will neverrr replicate or indicate the truthful persona of that filtered projection. Maybe that’s why Social Media is ironically so anti-social? Since people are never going to live up to the idea that they’ve created online they have to hide behind it far away from actual in-person human eyeballs. Eyeballs that would dress down the augmented thought to its hum-drum reality.

 

Humans will also look back at Dating Apps as one of the most puerile destructive creations ever installed into the natural mechanisms of love, romance and sex. The fantasy of endless choice and brutal disappointing realities of failed expectations in relation to a selective photoshopped slideshow was never going to make anyone truly happy – and yet we all gleefully went along with it; the Devil’s convenience fooled us once again.

 

One of the main pitfalls of online dating was always ‘Am I actually talking to someone real?’.  ‘Is the person in the photos actually the person I’m chatting with or is it someone else?’. I knew I had to delete all dating apps on my phone when I was doing more and more reverse image searches on my phone to check if the profile photos of my ‘match’ were authentic or pulled from somebody else’s profile (celebrity or model). Nothing will beat vibe. Period. Vibration is everything and cannot be manifested over technology or over the meticulous choice of phrases and emojis within a chatbox. I think that’s where we’re headed with art unfortunately. As AI proliferates into our conscious world we’ll find ourselves asking ourselves over and over ‘Was this article/book/painting/video/comic real or was it created by AI?’

 

It’s already begun. AI is encroaching slowly into our lives; a pas de deux between the human and the machine that seeks to be human. I don’t see this ending well. I don’t trust nor believe in the honest intentions of those who ostensibly are ‘in charge’ of the AI. Think about the moment when a gun was first created. Whatever you feel about guns I think it’s safe to say they haven’t been a blessing unto this world. If you could go back and just delete that idea from manifesting from our consciousness into reality I’m sure we would all have been a lot happier over the previous centuries. That’s where we are with AI. If we’re not careful AI will turn into a weapon far more destructive than any bullet could ever have dreamed of. And yet here we are, chatting with it online like it’s a teddy bear filled with gumdrops.

 

I bring all this up in regards to Scott Snyder’s ‘Clear’ because the ‘First Date’ of this comic was a magnificent performance while the ‘Second Date’ felt like it was written by AI. It felt like Scott roped us in with a grand premise and world in Issue 1 and then handed it off to ChatGPT to complete the journey. Obviously I doubt that actually happened but having flipped the last page over to this issue I feel like this story just catfished me. The first issue’s execution and hook were brilliant: A futuristic post-apocalyptic world where augmented reality ‘veils’ are the norm that dropped into a ‘noir murder mystery’. Then, what, did Scott have better things to do and just asked ChatGPT to write him a solid follow up to the first issue that will compel readers to then pick up the final installment despite its mediocrity?

 

What fell short in this issue was I lost the sense of this wild technological dystopia along with the mystery of how these ‘veils’ actually worked and got a bunch of standard stereotypical ‘Noir’ devices.

 

1.     The Hot and Bothered Wife visited by the Detective at her glam pool

2.     The Detective is shot but survives due to a bad guy actually being a good guy

3.     The Detective gets framed for a crime/murder he doesn’t commit

4.     The Detective on the run from his own police force

5.     The Detective hanging by one hand from a cliff as the real villain threatens him

 

Oy vey. Like, where was Jayne Mansfield telling our lead dude to ‘Come up and see her sometime’? I mean, Snyder should’ve made us a Spotify playlist of a droning saxophone with a empty tumbler of ice rattling in the background. Did he download a PDF of ‘How to make your Noir Story super Noir’ and  then upload it to his AI program?

 

Look, from now on, I am hereby calling for a full moratorium on all HEROES HANGING BY ONE HAND ON A FUCKING CLIFF! How many fucking times can stories have lit-er-al cliffhangers?!?!? Can someone actually do a study on how many actual cliffs are available in the world to have a hero hang from so we can astutely the assess how low the probability is for this ridiculous feat to happen. From now on, if you’re a writer, you’re not allowed to put any of your frikkin characters hanging from a cliff until you yourself have actually gone to a cliff, hung from it, and realized how batshit impossible it is to do any of the moves that your heroes supposedly do.

 

While we’re at it, if you’re going to write in a scene where a dude is holding onto a chick who’s dangling from a cliff with one arm then it should be required that you take a couple bags of groceries to a cliff and see how long your spindly nerdy ass can hold onto just a couple bags of groceries before all your containers of Oatly go tumbling onto the tumbleweeds below.

 

Yeesh.

 

Anyway, Francis Manapul’s art is flat out gorgeous. There’s a lot of amazing new and upcoming artists out in the comic book universe doing wonderful work. Now if only the writers could match their spectacular efforts we’d be in geeky heaven. As it stands, Snyder reverts to form from his previous three issue drops and poops out a clunker. I mean, it really wasn’t a clunker it just wasn’t nearly as ‘Wow’ as the first date. Now I’m roped into a third date because I’ve already shelled out for two dates and have barely gotten a smooch out of it.

 

How much you wanna bet Synder’s last issue of ‘Clear’ puts me in the friend zone?

 

Rating: 7.0

Verdict: Pull. [Grumble]

SPY SUPERB #3 - Review

 

This is going to be a rant about Kindt’s Marketing Team and a rant about these pricy Three Issue Series drops that seem to becoming more and more popular in the monthly comic book publishing world. These pricy 3 issue drops? They need to stop. Unless you’re coming with the super rarefied genius that Black Label came with last year, y’all need to stop. Unless you’re dropping something comparable to the unbelievable majesty that was Aquaman: Andromeda, Catwoman: Lonely City or Wonder Woman: Historia – y’all need to stop trying to charge our geeky asses all this bank for these wack ass three issue mini-series. Just because you fluff up the page count and compress a story and hire someone who’s got credits doesn’t automatically make your 3 Issue Money Grab grabbable.

 

See, the prices on the aforementioned books were justified. Hell, I probably woulda paid more if they upped the prices for Books 1 & 2 of all three of those Black Label titles they were so ridiculously amazing. But if you think you can just mush your story into three jumbo sized issues because you wanna hurry it up so you can double up your return on the monthly and the trade within six months – slow your roll. Most of these 3 issue jumbo sized extra page count books – are butt. One of those butt books was this Spy Supreme trasharama.

 

Look, it’s not easy having a coherent, well paced story with well rounded characters that traverse a fulfilling arc replete with a twist and a payoff at the end in only three issues. It takes talent. It takes a smart efficient editorial team and most of all it takes a solid concept that has zero holes in it. Spy Supreme has more holes in it than a golf course. My little baby’s doggy poo bags are stronger than this book’s flimsy AF plot. I don’t get it. Like, why? I just spent 25 bones on this mini series and I would rather have paid for a fancy shmancy ridiculously priced controversially lauded burger at Father’s Office in Culver City than piss my hard earned comic book bux down the drain on this half baked swill from Kindt.

 

Kindt! WTF? Mind MGMT! Genius! Pure effin genius. We want more, obvi (that’s what the kids say these days, obvi, look how hip I am) but if you’re gonna dip your wick back in the spy game again homie you can’t just poop any old idea you came up with at one of your Eyes Wide Shut parties in Hollywood where you were being violated by a dozen masked women and Kathy Griffin dressed as Maleficent with a strap-on. Your premise is sound: unsuspecting yutz is one of a line of other unsuspecting yutzes who have the traits to act as an invincible useful idiot to carry out missions they’re not even aware of, great! But it’s one note, bro. You don’t have a story here and because it’s so poorly plotted your scribbly art looks even scribblier, it looks like toilet paper square art and doesn’t enhance the story at all like it did in your groundbreaking Mind MGMT opus.

 

You come up with some cool spy people especially Roche Chambeaux, the dude who’s a killer that rocks scissors, poisoned paper squares and fists of titanium – brilliant. But the whole story goes nowhere and is fugazi. I don’t buy for a second that this ‘Lucky’ spy chick fell for this guy. I don’t have any connection to why this dude is being used nor has it been reinforced by whom. I can’t for the life of me figure why they’re in New Zealand other than it’s far away, woop de doo. The environment plays zero of a character in the plot; it could be anywhere. Dude, Matt, bubbeleh, you can’t drop genius, become Hollywood and then drop poop. You’ll tank your career. People will soon figure out you’re a hack even if you’re not. You’re a year away from wandering around Abbot Kinney in Venice on an Art Walk Night looking like you’ve just been on a bender for a month in a youth hostel in Europe.

 

You know what’s really sad? I could’ve typed into ChatGPT ‘Hey, evil AI, write me an unbelievable sequel to Matt Kindt’s Mind MGMT’ and been given more of an entertaining read than this. Hell, it probably would’ve drawn your stuff to a tee. Hell, I could’ve told it to draw in the cast of the Muppets and taken this AI Comic to next level award material. You know what’s really sadder? I bet that’s already happening. I bet we’ve already read some AI Comics. I mean, do you really think DC & Marvisney that’s being run by corporate cost cutting overlords haven’t already experimented on some of its wacker titles that don’t sell very well by now? The crazy thing is in a couple of years we probably won’t be able to tell the difference if this AI thing goes unchecked; we’re literally on the threshold of making most artists obsolete.

 

Anyway, back to this three issue insanity. I just spent 30 bones on 3 issues of Superman: Space Age. As mentioned before by me, the Three Issue Gambit is brilliant by marketing standards. You have an idea with a hook. You drop a pricy oversized page count issue. It’s good enough to make anyone want to buy the second issue. The second issue is good but not great, in most cases it might even suck. When the third issue comes out you feel compelled to buy it because A. You already bought the first two B. Just because the second issue sucked doesn’t mean the third will and at this point you might as well find out how it ends.

 

Then it’s over and you’re like ‘What the hell just happened???’ You just paid for what you would have paid for 6 comics over the span of six months in 3 and yet you didn’t necessarily have a transcendent experience, dude, you just got three issue banged on the dance floor at a Molly Rave at the Avalon on Vine on a Monday Night. The Majestic Black Label Books of 2022 had a lot of time off between issues. One had to assume it was because they were putting a hell of a lot of work in to make those issues unbelievably undeniably great – and they were. Look at 'A Vicious Circle', that also is a 3 issue prestige drop but issue 2 hasn't come out yet and it's been 4 months since issue one. That tells me they're working hard on delivering the goods for issue 2. But this ‘Spy The Herb?’, turns out it was nothing more than a cog in the marketing scheme of the Kindt team.

 

Well looky looky at what we have here at the very end of this series plastered on the inside of the back cover:

 

 

Fifty Bux! My goodness. To be honest, this actually looks great, I mean, this looks waaaay better than the gobstopping swill I just ingested from this 3 issue drop. The more I look into it the more I wish I had bought this instead of these 3 comics. I wasn’t aware this was even out. So, again, Kindt/Dark Horse is trying to upsell you after a Mini-Series. They did with the Mind MGMT:Remix 4 issue series that was blah at best. That one seemed completely tailored as a hook for the Mind MGMT Boardgame, which cost $50 also. So these comics are just marketing tools for even more expensive purchases, they’re not comics for the sake of them being comics. Do you really think after reading two mediocre poorly thought out mini series that I’m going to be all hyped up to drop an extra $100 on more Mindless MGMT stuff? Like, ‘Hey, thanks for wasting $25! Here, drop another $50 on this!’ Dude. C’mon. I mean, if this was a great Mini Series or even a great 6 issues I might consider it but after pooping on three of my mornings with this caca I’m not really inclined to spend more, capische?

 

Like, Saga puts out perfect issues every month and then is like, ‘Hey, we have merch if you want it’. Great! I’ll check that out, might even buy some. Or if Lemire or Bendis drops six dope issues in a row and the publisher is like ‘Hey, look at all the other stuff this dude wrote’. Great! I might check that out and buy it too. But this just feels like a comic book hook. Like, I didn’t even know about the board game and this book to begin with, but now I do, after paying $40 between the two series. That makes me feel yucky. Like, either market it properly to people in the game and trade market or pump out some bad ass quality engaging books that would pique my interest for more.

 

Matt, bubbeleh, I get it, LA is expensive. Can’t find a decent cup coffee for less than $8 after a tip. Power Bills are more expensive than your TV & Phone bills combined. You can’t eat out without at least dropping $30-40 per person, and that’s at a chintzy taco spot in Mar Vista. But dude, you’re doing it ass backwards. Star Wars releases Star Wars and then says buy the action figures. You’re selling the action figures before the movie homie. Get your shit correct. You officially get the ‘Stink Eye’ next time I see something that is in the solicits from you. Hey, it’s baseball season…

 

Cause it’s One. Two. Three Issues and you’re Out of $$$ in the Ol’ Comic Game!

 

Rating: 5.7

Verdict: SMH

 

CLEAR #1 - Review

 

 Here we go again with Snyder and these 3 issue series. I’ve been burned before: ‘We Have Demons’ and ‘Night of the Ghoul’; those were both major oy’s to the veys. This one, per usual Double S, intrigues me. Apparently this has already been released digitally on Comixology so I assume it did well enough to warrant printing it? Uggh, I loathe that whole marketing premise: Release it digitally, see how it does and if if sells then print it for the world. Everything is hedging your bets these days isn’t it? God forbid you just say, hey I like your idea, write the shit out of it and let’s put it out to the world. No Risk=No Glory. I feel like Image is aligned with that thinking, for the most part. As has been lamented before in this blogamajigeroo, the whole 4, 5, 6 issues dropping at a time before there is an evaluation to come up with more is really bringing me down along with a lot of other comic geeks I know. They justify it by saying they’re story arcs where more than half the time they’re just a continuation of what the hell was going on in the first place; in other words…a series. I can’t say why this is the norm now but it sucks balls.

 

Does anybody actually read digital comics? I suppose many do. I mean, can you even consider that a comic at that point, it’s more like webpages with art on them. I would dry heave if I had to open up an app on a tablet and then swipe left on my digital comic; what a dehumanizing concept. It’s like dating apps for comic books. It feels like you’re reading a comic book but you’re not actually reading one just like it feels like you’re viably communicating with a prospective smooch prospect but you’re not. You’re looking at the ingredients of a comic but not actually ingesting one. You don’t go to a restaurant and tell the kitchen to bring you the ingredients to your meal do you?

 

I also can’t understand why digital comics cost the same as regular comics. Clearly that’s a misstep by the industry. Either make digital 4 bux and real tree juice comics all 6 or 7 bux or make the comics 4 bux and the digital 2 bux. Pricing all formats at the same price point makes zero sense and undermines the idea that it costs more to print, ship and deal with LCS human beings. I get that the argument for digital anything is convenience and that it saves space. Having traversed the entire rainbow path of having nothing but physical products to having everything be digital to 2023 I can say that actually feeling and touching something is way more of a fulfilling experience than just having it exist on a rectangular device somewhere.

 

Remember that moment in the ‘Steve Jobs’ movie where Michael Fassbender as Jobs is on the roof of a building at the end of the movie talking with his daughter? She’s upset or something or is about to walk away and he says “I can put 1000 songs in your pocket”. Clearly this was a reference to having the iPod in development which would turn the world of content upside down. If I was his daughter I would have rushed at him, pounced on his chest and with my fingers clenching down on his throat I’d growl ‘Nothing will replace Vinyl you degenerate NerdFuck!’.

 

Dave Chapelle tells a story where he was in a bar or something with Steve Jobs and Jobs was bragging about how he had the first iPhone in his pocket. Chapelle says he should have taken it from him and thrown it into the ocean and thereby would have saved all of us. Look, in no way am I luddite but digital convenience will, at least for me, never replace tangible objects that enrich our experience. You can’t bag and board a digital comic. I mean, you can snag the file and drag it to your bag and board gif but there’s something about bagging and boarding a comic you loved and putting it away for posterity’s sake that can’t be replaced. I do realize that since rents now average 3K a month here in La La Land that you need to be making six figures in order to afford a big enough place for your comic book collection; so there’s that.

 

Okay okay, ‘Clear’. Well, I’m clear that ‘Clear’ is the best thing Snyder has written since Wytches and his majestic New 52 Batman Run. Praise Jesus, Allah, Buddha and Prince we finally have a winner! Took ya long enough Double S. This is Sci-Fi Noir at its best. This is the Sci-Fi book I’ve been waiting for. A real Superstar Writer’s take on the whole Augmented Reality phenomenon. Snyder nails it on the head with this whole ‘Veils’ filtered reality concept wrapped around a hard boiled murder mystery. Couple that with Francis Manapul’s flawless art that captures this futuristic world to a tee and I’m all in. So this was just sitting on a digital cloud for months until it made it into the physical world? Ridiculous! This should have been front and center in my LCS like it was an overhyped Marvisney Multidimensional Multitrashbinfodder Crossover Event.

 

Man, there’s nothing better than seeing a battered and bruised dude with a hard lined jaw walking into his office with the blinds barely cracked open to find a smoky hot babe in a pencil thin dress bursting out of her top wanting to talk to him about her case. I’d like that. Maybe the Marvisney people can send me a babe from their marketing division to come here dressed like Mary Jane Parker to talk about their case and why I’ve been ripping them apart for the past 6 months.

 

Minor little gripes:

 

1.     It takes place in San Francisco 2052. That’s thirty years in the future which means that’s thirty years of deranged psychopathic homeless people pooping all over the city. By then there’d have to be poop neighborhoods and poop castles. There’d probably also be a Poop Skateboard Park where skateboarders drop into poop half pipes, poop ledges and poop rails. This would’ve added another layer of realism, maybe our protagonist hunts down the murderer at a poop dock, that would be cool.

 

2.     The pretext for the war that brought the US to its knees is pure caca legacy media lamestream news nonsense. So Snyder says that China took over Taiwan, then Russia invaded Poland like they’re Nazi Germany then North Korea invaded South Korea. China’s invasion of Taiwan would not cause us to do ske-wat because they own half of our land and we buy all of our cheap junk that lines every Target and Walmart from them. Enough with us fighting China, ain’t gonna happen. Plus, Russia would never invade Poland nor would The Jong Un invade South Korea. Some dipshit’s been watching too much Wolf and Anderson and needs to stop believing the tripe that gets reported on NPR and Apple News.

 

3.    Snyder then says that our military initiative was turned back by China because they programmed all of our missiles to turn around on us and blow up our shit. C’mon Snyder. This ain’t War Games and Matthew Broderick isn’t sitting in the Pentagon, come up with something a little more believable or just skip the whole geo political military stuff altogether.

 

Other than that, this was a super fun issue to read through and it was jam packed from front to back with pages of Manapul artistic goodness with zero ads; a serious clear bang for my buckaroo. Obviously given Snyder’s history on these three issue drops the second issue go could south and implode faster than a six pack of Bud Light at Kid Rock’s ranch but with this fantastic premise I think Snyder would be hard pressed to mess this one up. If you read this on Comixology only, I feel bad for you. It’s like you enjoyed this on a web cam. I got the real thing baby. Nothing like turning the page of an actual page. It’s called a Comic Book not a Comic Swipe.

 

Rating: 9.1

Verdict: Pull and Turn

SPY SUPERB #1 - Review

 

Well, looks like Matt Kindt is the Golden Boy of Hollywood all of a sudden. He’s got a bunch of projects in development at Netflix, he’s hobknobbing with Studio Mucky Mucks in forever pools while drinking hard kombucha and he’s dropping 8 dollar comic books for the plebes. He even looks like a Hollywood Mucky Muck, look at this pic of him to the right:

 

Actually, he looks more like a creepy pedo staring at kiddies through a chain link fence. Either that or the weirdo that wanders through Tompkins Square park in New York City in the wee hours mumbling to himself about the war and the need for a hearty minestrone. I mean, if this guy showed up at my door with my DoorDash order I’d text him to drop the food and slowly back away from my door with his long wool overcoat peeled open to reveal any possible blunt objects. I’ve also got a Stink Eye for the Kindt Eye since his last 4 issue Mind MGMT: Bootleg debacle which turned out to be nothing but a long winded ad for the Mind MGMT board game.

 

Kindt’s also getting the Hollywood ‘Meets’ treatment where your projects are dangled between two opposing characters or personalities. For Spy Superb we get ‘John Wick meets Wes Anderson’. Yeah, no. This ain’t no John Wick meets Wes Anderson this book is Matt Kindt meets his wife Sharlene in the study and they make a comic book. This is Mind MGMT meets Mgmt MIND where video games, audio books and podcasts are standing at the ready for all your scribbly pastel colored needs. Did Wes Anderson dismiss Matty at a swanky Golden Globes party and now Matty wants to return the favor by reducing this great filmmaker to a scribbly book? There’s also zero John Wick in this book, it’s just a shmo who somehow manages to escape being killed by 5 killers as they accidentally kill themselves in his kitchen.

 

The premise? The legend of an invincible spy ‘Spy Superb’ is kept alive by an intelligence agency by using unsuspecting normies to carry out the missions. In order to maintain the charade or lose a bunch of secrets stored on a phone they rope in an unsuspecting roob named Jay Bartholomew who considers himself an Auteur but is nothing more than a shmo who works at a bookstore. Clever. I can just see Matty Kay and Jonah Hill getting prostate massages from some Trannies overlooking the Pacific Palisades talking up the plot to this book and bandying about the name for the book store shmo.

 

Jonah: How about James Bartles, like the opposite of Bartles & James?

 

MattY Kay DawG: James Bartles, hilarious, you’re a hoot Jay H Doggie. Ooh, how about Jay H James. I mean, you’re on board for the Apple TV + series right?

 

Jonah: I’m on board if his name is Jay Hewson, that was the name of this asshole who crashed my Bar Mitzvah, won the limbo contest and made out with my crush Jessica Fish.

 

Matty Kizzle Dizzle: You knew a girl named Jessica Fish?

 

Jonah: Yeah, I think she’s rapping in Asia under the name J-Lox.

 

MKD: Word ‘em up.

 

Jonah: Jay Bartles? Jay Bartholomew? J.B. Chunky, not smooth?

 

Mind MATTAGEMENT: Dudaroonski, Jay fuckin Bartholomew, boom.

 

So, Jay Bee gets this phone, heads to his pad and five assassins show up to take him out. But Jay is so klutzy or lucky that they all end up accidentally killing themselves or each other: a burner on a stove explodes, a bunch of steak knives somehow end up in a guy’s back, a simple kitchen fire extinguisher is apparently deadly enough to take out two men as well. Yeah, I call BS. If you pitched this scene to me as an exec in an elevator at CAA I’d take your parking validation and make you pay the $30 for the 10 minutes you were in the building. My goodness, you people probably have no idea how they’ve jacked up the prices for non-validated vehicles in office buildings in Los Angeles. It’s out of control. I also feel receptionists have different validation cards, like if they like you then you get 2-3 hours but if someone calls the front desk before you leave it’s 15 minutes and good luck loser.

 

Anyway, look, this book isn’t half bad, in fact it’s pretty good. I love love love the cover. The Trader Joe’s bag variant with the receipt on the back and the ‘Trader/Traitor’ pun is genius. I’d like to think that Matt K Dawg shops at Trader Joe’s and hasn’t become an Erewhon snob yet. Maybe that’s wishful thinking at this point. There’s absolutely no reason why you wouldn’t want to check out the next issue other than the fact that it’s 8 frikkin’ bux. I don’t see why this book is 8 bux. Wonder Woman Historia and other Black Label mega hits like Aquaman Andromeda were priced around 8 bux and they were in Prestige Format. That’s a no brainer there. What’s this fascination now by publishers with three issue series for 8 bux each? Let’s just pump these out quickly so I can drop the $40 trade with the extras and downloadable Augmented Reality Filters and a Pokemon card, is that it? Hot to trot comic book dudes are now too busy to lord over a six to twelve month issue commitment because they’re too busy walking around a high stakes Hollywood Writers room swinging a bat like they’re Tom Cruise in ‘A Few Good Men’?

 

I mean, uggh, it just feels like more and more that comic books are not just comic books for comic books sake they have to key in to the grand machine of content that cascades into the endless vacuum void of screen addicted earthlings. That’s all well and good and I get it, who wouldn’t want their creations finding new homes and new outlets of expression? Who wouldn’t want to roll up into an exciting casting session where little starlets wander in reciting lines you thought up in your boxer shorts in your studio apartment in Waukesha?

 

Spy Superb isn’t really superb, it’s Spy Pretty Good and you’ll probably yank the next two issues to say ‘I read this when…’ as Jonah accepts his Golden Globe for his portrayal of James Bartles (name changed on first day of shooting by Jonah as Matt was escorted off set by security)

 

Rating: 8.3

Verdict: Pull

NIGHT OF THE GHOUL - The Horrific Harrowing Tale of Scott Snyder

Night of the Ghoul mercifully came to an end after three issues drained my comic book budget of 15 bux. There’s something yucky about turning the last page of something that brought you no joy whatsoever other than the intrigue of something great. One would think I would have learned my lesson with all the eye candy flopping about Los Angeles but I guess I still have much to learn when it comes to trusting comic book creators to come with the booyaka shot of comic book goodness. I have to say, I’m completely befuddled by this poop fest. Scott Snyder has become that Rookie Phenom who had a blistering do-no-wrong first season (Batman; Court of Owls) but has barely gotten the ball out of the infield since. I’m looking at you ‘We Have Demons’ and all that “Dark Metal DC Crossover Omnibust Madness’.  He did have ‘Wytches’ which was a horror genre shot to the bleachers, which is why I thought this would be another wallop.

 

I get that he was doing an homage to all the great Horror Movies of yesteryear with his back and forth between current day burnt face director in an old folks home and crinkly grainy footage of a lost cinematic masterpiece. It just all felt so…goofy? I didn’t once feel like I cared for any of the characters. The Dad was like a whiny entitled film executive type from Calabasas who was pestering some old relic for footage like he was at Gelson’s badgering the deli counter guy to find another piece of Teriyaki Salmon in the back or go fishing for one. The kid was a mealy mouthed cardboard cut out of a character who you wanted to see eaten by a bunch of old lanky purple zombie yuckmouths. Who was I supposed to be rooting for in this mish mosh?

 

Not only that, but I can’t for the life of me understand why the artist Frankie Francavilla kept putting his insignia on a bunch of the pages he drew. Have you ever seen that??? Like, the cover, fine, maybe the final splash page but on random pages right in the middle of the story? WTF? It totally takes you out of the narrative and makes you think ‘oh yeah some egotistical doofus drew this it’s not real’. Please tell me it’s the editors fault and not Frankie’s as I happen to really enjoy his work a lot. Okay, then I had an epiphany…

 

It finally hit me, I realized what was going on here. This wasn’t Scott Snyder writing a horror story/homage to classic monster movies. This was Scott Snyder’s way of writing a plea to the masses. It was his way of revealing what happened at the very end of his initial Batman run where his Mr. Bloom story line abruptly came to a quizzical end. It’s become pretty clear to me that Synder and Capullo were summoned to the depths underneath the Getty Center to a meeting where the Lords of Comic Book Entertainment were to give them an initiation into the high order while giving them their marching orders. To his credit, Snyder refused and what you see in The Ghoul is his reenactment of his escape with Capullo from the gruesome clutches of the Marvel and DC Minions. 

 

So first we have Scott Snyder seeing his demonic masters gathered for the first time here:

 

That’s him in the circle at the top. Imagine how shocked he was when he saw this. First the burning skeletons. The one on the left staring blankly ahead is Walt Disney while the one at the head of the table is Bob Hope. Notice how Bob is enjoying himself while Walty is a bit verklempt, probably because he wants to eat the Brian Wood Pie sitting on the table but can’t. Yes, that is a pie made from our long lost disappeared Brian Wood. You know how they say if you go woke you go broke. Well, if you don’t go woke you get smoked, as in they put you in a BBQ smoker for a few days before deciding what to do with you. Most get turned into sausages but some get pastries or pasta; Wood became a pie. Finally, the burning skeleton waaay in the back is Jack Kirby, poor guy, even in eternity he’s still not getting his proper payback.

 

Look at all those Marvel Execs in the background hobknobbing with each other while they drink Beelzebub’s Brew. That’s where they get the gumption and inspiration to ruin all of your favorite comic book series. Right now they’re discussing how to totally destroy the Daredevil brand. They probably met again about a month or so ago because it’s already happened in Issue #6; a complete Double D Disaster of an issue. That gruesome red skull spider blob thing is actually Stan Lee, can you believe it? All he wanted was to make great comic books for the world and this is what they did to him. I heard that if you put your ear to that gaping mouth of his you’ll hear the squeaky refrain of ‘Make Mine Marvel’. Will somebody please save his eternal Spidey Soul!!!

 

Lastly there’s Jamie Lee Curtis in the bottom left corner asking around for another kid in a suitcase to take home with her, what a total witch. The dialogue you see in the black word bubbles isn’t dialogue at all. It’s everyone repeating the same phrase in Aramaic ‘5.99 a book. 5.99 a book’ over and over because that’s what they want to charge by the end of 2023, $5.99 for each and every comic on the stands. Oh and look at the back of the chair at the bottom of the page, there’s Frankie F’s Effin Insignia Brand, what the fookity fook??? Anyway, let’s move on, it gets worse for Scott:

 

So the dude with the glasses, beard and red skull on his head with the pot belly is George Lucas. All the skeletons you see underneath him were random writers in Hollywood who were given the opportunity to suck on his belly ball sack. When you suck on that belly ball sack you get ideas for Star Wars Spinoffs; that’s where the idea from the Mandolorian came from. Unfortunately, his belly ball sack is so rancid and toxic that if you take too much of a sip you incinerate into flames; hence the mound of skeletons. One of my old writing partners is probably on that hill of death. The two old dudes are Bob Iger and Joe Biden talking about how to make a villain out of a Gas Stove. All those gross Purple Things are DC Executives, yeah, they’re not that high up on the Luciferian Ladder. They’re kinda like the Arby’s in a world of McDonalds. Next…

 

So in this panel we see George Lucas ordering for the sacrifice of Greg Capullo. This is how it works, in order to advance up the ranks of Marvel now you have to let someone close to you who’s a real amazing creative being get eaten by George which in turn makes his belly ball sack of ideas grow. I’m not sure why Scott Snyder had to include another panel of Walt Disney whining about not being able to eat any of the Brian Wood pie, maybe he and Brian were friends. Oh, and there’s Jamie Lee toasting the Marvel Execs since they just promised her a dozen kids in a dozen suitcases that will be delivered to her Comet Pictures office. That’s Meryl Streep on the outside looking in, if you listen closely you can hear her say ‘Kids in suitcases? Yum?’

 

So Greg is about to eaten by the living wall made up of all the great Marvel comics that were cancelled. I’m pretty sure Frank Miller lives in that wall, yeesh, what a gruesome old demonic fucktwit he’s become. So Scott is telling us how he wouldn’t let Greg be sacrificed to George’s belly ball sack and as he freed him when he looked back he saw this:

 

Which were all the DC Executives running after him to grind him into pie paste. I’m pretty sure that while all this was happening DC was finishing up the final issues for Synder’s initial Batman run which is why the books were so abruptly completed.

Wow. What a story. Thank you Scott for your courage. I’m not sure if you had to sign an NDA and vow to release nothing but complete and utter drivel for the rest of your career but at least you and Greg are safe.

 

Night of the Ghoul: A True Hollywood Comic Book Tale.

 

I’ll be starting a GoFundMe to retrieve the remains of Brian Wood in the near future, stay tuned.

 

Rating: All Heil George

Verdict: No Brian Wood Pie for Me.

GROO: GODS AGAINST GROO #1 - Review

Where my Groo heads at? You down with the Grizzooo? How can you not be? I’ve been down with the Gee Arr double Ohhh since Epic Comics ’n shit. Since like Mad Magazine side bars n’ shit. I’m on eBay at 4am doing Pacific Comics Groo bids for some shady ass seller in Sarajevo. I probably have more Groo stuff than I have Spidey stuff. Honestly when was the last time any Spiderman stuff was beyond great? 1967? Groo gets the job done all day every day like good toilet paper that doesn’t leave little rolled up balls of paper up your bunghole. The way I see it Groo needs a whole lotta more love in the comic book universe. He’s currently with Dark Horse which is an imprint that has been crapping the bed and the page lately. They give Aragones & Co these 4 issue mini series about 2-3 times a year which is okay but I think they’re underselling him. 

If you ask me, Groo needs a new agent. Some total ruddy faced dickwad in an Armani suit who does blow every hour on the hour and goes to private parties in the hills to worship Moloch. Let’s call him Max. I bet Max could get the Groo brand placed everywhere. I wanna see Max send some goombahs named Moose and Rocco to the hipster snowflake Dark Horse offices in Portland where they pummel the legal department to release the Groo license while forcing them to drink coffee with dairy milk and cane sugar. Before they leave, Moose and Rocco makes the editorial staff cry while they eat beef burgers in front of them and wave an American flag. 

Once Max gets the Groo license he calls in Sergio and he starts pitching him on the new Groo-pocalypse.

Max: Serge, bubbeleh, come in come in, sit the fuck down. Wow, we’re gonna have to change this ‘Mexican Zoo Tourist Guide’ look you got going on. That doesn’t leave the room; fucking sensitive pussies out there.

Sergio: I like the view.

Max: This? Whatever, I’ve been asking for a window that opens out so I can take a fucking dump without having to go to the shitter. Anyway. Groo. I’m gonna have the kids, gen double x why the fuck z, the gamers, the influencers saying Groo so much it’s gonna be the hashtag of 2023. 

Sergio: I do not smoke hash.

Max: Yeah, me neither, gives me the yips and my shit turns blue. I’ve got the socials team already making Groo Memes and -

Sergio: What’s a meme?

Max: Fuck if I know. Pansy Gen Z bullshit. I’m getting Groo every-fucking-where. Groo-Gram. Groo on the View. Groo on Law & Order, which isn’t much, they’d cast your Zoo Tucchus on Law & Order but whatever. Groo on the Masked Singer -

Sergio: He is a mendicant and does not sing.

Max: Yeah neither do any of those washed up celebrities either. I want him on there to meet Ken Jeong who basically owns half of Hollywood now. I’m also getting Groo in that Lord of The Rings Snoozefest on Prime -

Sergio: I’m not sure he -

Max: Yeah, not a good fit but, look, if I get him a co-star I have an excuse to fly to set and hit on that hot Blonde chick. I want her to ride me like a heroic horse following a hobbit into a volcano. 

Sergio: I have some ideas for new story -

Max: Yeah don’t worry bout that, my crack team of writers, well, they don’t do really crack, they’re more of a ‘shroom type of crowd, yeah they’re on the feature. I got Michelle Pfeiffer as some Queen Warrior in it. Can’t believe I haven’t banged her after all these years, that’s a bad job outta me. And oh yeah, Chuck Norris is gonna be the dog.

Sergio: Rufferto?

Max: Yeah, but like Gollum stuff where it’s all CGI Green screen whatever the fuck. 

Sergio: What about comics?

Max: Yeah I had Sandler interested but I think he’s trying to be some Ted Talk asshole now. Chapelle won’t do it cuz of optics. I mean your Africans look like Africans which, what the fuck do I know, is probably racist. I could probably get Bill Burr on as that Minstrel dude, he’ll take anything.

Sergio: No I mean comic books.

Max: What about them? 

Sergio: I write them.

Max: You want me to get you in at Marvel? No can do pal. Disney’s got that whole creative team wrapped around their cock so hard we call them the Pubes. You literally have to lick the frozen prostate of Walt Disney to even get a meeting over there and I heard it tastes like moldy Haggis so no dice. 

Best I can do is get the Grooster in a drag show for kindergartners that they do every Saturday in Burbank. Maybe if he wears a full leather body suit with his junk hanging out for a month or two they’ll take a meeting.

Sergio: Groo does not like junk he likes cheese dip.

Max: Cheese Dip huh? That’s what I called this broad I was dating from Torrance. Her poon smelt like rotten Jarlsberg cheese. She thought me dry heaving when I went down on her was me being turned on for some fucking reason.

Sergio: I have idea for -

Max: Why are you still here? [presses intercom] Annie? Get Zoo Tamale here a shave and a haircut and then send him to Zhushzy for a new wardrobe, thanks.

Okay, well, maybe he won’t be a complete obnoxious asshole but you get the idea. We need more Groo! Seriously, I’m not sure why there hasn’t been a Groo movie or a Saturday morning Groo TV Series yet. Why is there little to no Groo merch out there? This character is built for all kinds of stuff to buy that you don’t need: 

Groo Nose Slippers. Groo Cheese Dip Fondue Set. Groo Beer Coozys. Groo Drawers where you an put your stuff in the nose pouch!

I hope somebody doesn’t realize this 50 years from now when the Great Sergio may have already left us. All Groo tales will guarantee you a few actual laugh out louds. They will deliver a message and some hidden wisdom and will provide you enough cartooning detail in full page layouts than you can shake a lute at. So what gives? Give this legend some luuvvvv.

The current installment is pure Groo Formulaic Yumminess. Yes, it's the third arc of the series but you can easily jump on right now and not really miss a beat. Just because it's formulaic shouldn't dissuade anyone at all. I mean, you go to the same family run taco place over and over because their tacos never disappoint. You use the same dating profile over and over because the psychos it pulls never disappoints. Feels like comics in general are really intense and apocalyptic these days. Nothing wrong or silly for pulling out a Groo mid-week and taking a break from the 'world hangs in the balance' narrative.

While I was watching the circus that was our congress last week I couldn't help thinking 'We should just tell Groo that there's a fray in the House of Representatives and just let him loose'. A Groo-surrection may be what this country ultimately needs...and an organic cheese dip brand. 

Rating: 8.8

Verdict: Pull