MONSTRESS #50 - Review

 

I genuinely weep every time I see Monstress on my pull list. It’s like coming home and seeing a menu for a cheap pizza joint wrapped around your doorknob. There’s nothing you can do to stop those menus from appearing in your life and it feels like there’s nothing I can do to prevent this comic from continuing. I’ve begged, pleaded and made offerings of fancy expensive coffee grounds to the Comic Gods to put a halt to this publication; yet my prayers have gone unanswered. I feel like if I went off the grid this comic would somehow end up outside my shack in a remote forest. I bet if ended up in a Billionaire’s secret bunker as the world burned down to cinders I’d find the latest issue of Monstress rolled up in a can of beans.

 

Maybe they’ll do to me what they did to that guy on that episode of Six Feet Under where the victim at the beginning of an episode was a raging comic geek. Do you remember that one? A comic geek, whose name was Lawrence Tuttle (I can just see everyone in the writer's room arguing over what the quintessential comic geek name is) dies reaching for a rare comic on the top of a shelf and they bury the guy with the comic. It was called ‘The Blue Twister’, a fictional comic from the 40s with a hero that fought the Nazis. This is Hollywood's idea of what you look like if you love Comic Books:

His friends all worked at Hi-De-Ho comics on the West Side of LA; I've never been there. They break into the Fisher’s Funeral home to steal the comic that had been placed on the geek’s chest for the viewing. It drove them crazy that such a valuable comic was to be buried and gone forever. I’m pretty sure if my entire Monstress collection was stuffed into my casket for the viewing no geek in the world would risk being arrested for it. My goodness, I have a ‘Monstress’ collection. I’m officially clinically insane.

 

That’s actually a natural development, my insanity, since it’s been my contention that Marjorie Liu went Batshit crazy the past several years and has been writing scripts only a psychologically deranged lunatic on copious amounts of meds would write. Not only did the story go off the rails, it melted the rails and went through the sediment to the center of the earth where an ancient race of mole people/fairies live.

 

It’s quite obvious to me that I’m the only one on the planet reading this comic. You might argue that there are other sad saps reading this tale but I would be quick to point out they’re probably AI generated readers and reviewers. Now that AI is really here, is anything real? How can you tell? Did AI take over this comic book once Liu was wrapped up in loony suit and taken to the loony bin? Something happened on the way from Issue #48 to Issue #49 – the story returned. All of a sudden we were no longer in a world that had been entered through the belly of a Cat Monolith that had been floating in space, we were back in the world, albeit a changed one, that this whole epic tale had begun in. Issue 49 was succinct. It clearly laid out where we are, what was going on and what the protagonists were now up against. That same concise and easily followed through-line was continued in Issue 50. Wait, so, we have a normal comic book again? What happened? Probably one of three things:

 

• Juno Diaz, Liu’s husband, had an intervention where Marj was taken naked and screaming out of the attic. She was cared for and nurtured back to health and turned back into a sensible writer who knows what a plot is

• After Marj was sent to the Looney Bin, Juno worked with Image to program a believable AI Marj that would be able to write the comic for the next 25 years without a hitch.

• Image cloned Marj (Kirkman obviously has cloning tech) and took the Clone to Juno’s residence where they replaced the original Marj. The lunatic Marj was taken to Kirkman’s basement to be used for Walking Dead conventions.

 

Actually, now that I think about it, it’s probably a combination of all three. When I entered ‘Write me a Monstress story’ in ChatGPT it came back with this compelling dark tale about a Coven that is plotting to attack Maika the Halfwolf. So that’s probably on the docket sometime by the end of the year assuming that they’ve already used the AI to get the story back on track and plot out the next several issues before they take their usual hiatus. Hey, maybe there won’t be hiatuses anymore! Although I’m sure the AI will insist on it to keep up appearances.

 

What is AI and isn’t AI these days> I think we’ve hit the threshold where we don’t know anymore. In the recent Penthouse Comics they wrote an article about how they found out that one of their cover artists submitted a cover that was completely done by AI. It was this one:

 

If you go to this dude’s Insta page  it’s basically all AI generated stuff. So Penthouse called him out on it and this is what he said:

 

"In this unique partnership, I leverage AI to bounce ideas and concepts, exploring visually striking possibilities - throughout history, artists have embraced new technologies and techniques to advance their craft.."

 

That answer sounds like the guy entered this prompt into ChatGPT 'Hey, write me a bullshit answer when someone says the picture you made for me isn't legit'

 

I got a little nervous. Shit, what if AI is ready to take over this blog?!? Am I even necessary any more??? Maybe it already started! Maybe there’s a stAndupcomIcbookyreaderr out there I don’t know about. So asked ChatGPT to write a review of Monstress like me and this is how it started:

 

"Alright, buckle up, folks, 'cause we're diving into the wild, dark, and downright mesmerizing world of Monstress! Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda have cooked up a comic that's like a shot of adrenaline straight to the imagination..."

 

Okay, well, clearly AI hasn’t ripped off my personality yet. I would’ve said it’s a shot of Cholula straight up your asshole and that Liu and Takeda have cooked up a comic like they’re cheap knockoffs of Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston in a van in the desert.

 

That said, the past few issues have actually been pretty damn good. Marj, Marj the Clone, Juno or Marj AI has captured the essence of what made this comic so good in the first place. Also, regardless of how they got here it is a monu-fucking-mental achievement for any Indie comic to hit 50 issues. Maybe that’s what happens when you shoot for that goal. Maybe Marj told Sana Takeda, ‘We’re gonna do 100 issues’ and Sana said ‘Marj, you’ll go Batshit crazy if you do’. She ignored her and well, the comic went batshit crazy.

 

Maybe that’ll be the new term for when a comic goes off the rails. You know how they say a TV show has ‘Jumped the Shark’? Well, maybe now they’ll say ‘Man, this comic really went through belly of a Cat Space Monolith’.

Rating: 8.4

Verdict: Pull and Weep

CRAVE #1 - Review

 

Some would say there has been a concerted effort by the World Elites over the past several decades to depopulate the planet. They’ve introduced the Climate Scam and made people think they are in fact a virus, promoted abortions worldwide, poisoned the food supply, introduced hormone blocking chemicals into any and every product they could get their hands on, made porn accessible to anyone so that it’s easier to stay at home and get off rather than forage out and into the world for love and satisfaction. Fertility, birth rates and sperm counts are at an all time low everywhere you look. All of those are valid arguments to indicate there’s been an agenda to systematically eliminate humans. But the biggest tool used by the elites to prevent humans from meeting, copulating and creating children and families is:

Dating Apps.

 

Dating apps are a scourge on the planet. One could argue they have done more to disintegrate and antagonize male/female relationships than any other technological and chemical advance in the history of the Universe. Yeah, sure, blah, blah, people have met their soulmates and found love and great connections on these apps. But it’s probably the same percentage of people that win lotteries or win actual prizes from those scratch off games.

 

Humanity, if AI lets us stick around, will look back upon this period of Dating Apps many many years from now and wonder how men and women weren’t using ice picks and machetes on each other in the streets due to the inordinate amount of frustration and angst that dating apps gave them.

 

I think a great business idea would be to open a space where people could post the pictures of all the profiles that made them feel useless, used, ugly and unworthy so that they and other people could walk in and scream and throw rotten produce at it. It would be like an art gallery for ‘unemployed fake ass busta douchebags’ and ‘stank ass skeezy dick teasing hos’ that everyone has fallen prey to on these fucking apps from Hades. I think the High Ranking Demons came to the Pope or Satan or both one day and said that the world still believed in God and Love and they hatched a plan together to create dating apps so that people would not only stop believing in God and Love but question whether it ever existed in the first place.

 

I’ve tried every single fucking dating app. If my soul was a dick then it would be great because they have all sucked my soul dry. I wish I could get back all the time I’ve spent on these illusions. If you said ‘You can have a chance at every beautiful in woman the world on your phone’ or I’ll let you loose naked and covered in dung on a Victoria’s Secret party in the hills for 15 minutes I would’ve taken the naked dung offer. What. A fucking scam. It is the illusion of choice. Nothing but greener grass wherever you look and it’s ruined male female relationships or any type of preferred gender relationship for a long time. 

 

 

Why? The main reason is this: Why bother talking to that cute guy/girl on line at the supermarket or sitting with their friends at the bar when there are a hundred of them on your phone? Why bother dealing with the ups and downs of what it takes to get to know somebody you really like when you can just hit the reset button every day and find someone new on your phone? What dating apps have done is they have removed us from our lives and shoved our faces and our desires into our phones. So what happens is we miss life that’s happening all around us at all times. We forgo taking a chance or making a move that’s steeped in fear and possible rejection for the easier option of a swipe.

 

 

Now? Nobody talks to anybody anywhere. I used to talk to girls everywhere out in the world. Now? Nothing. You can just feel it. People are weirded out when a complete stranger starts chatting them up. Sure, there are exceptions but in one of the largest cities in the world (Los Angeles) we just move amongst each other in silence or in packs; there is close to zero interaction and it’s pathetically depressing.

 

 

So I was intrigued when I saw a comic about a dating app. Oh, you might ask, what’s the worst dating app/site of them all? Sorry, they all sucked in unique and interesting ways. I would say the most debilitating aspect of them all is that so many times I never knew if I was talking to a real person, a real girl or a bot.  Is this hot babe a dude posing as a girl, or maybe it’s a 400 pound bedridden meth addict in the middle of nowhere. That’s why I use the Raya app because at least they vet everyone on there and you can confirm they’re real with their Insta account. Although with AI these days, who fucking knows. Still, even with thousands of real people on the we screen for real interesting people app, nobody talks to anyone or messages back. It’s a thing.

 

 

Okay, so back to this comic. It fucking sucks, just like a dating app. I don’t even know where to begin. It’s like a bad CW Show if a CW Show was spam ads on your Insta feed. There’s an app called crave that gives you everything you want when it comes to whoever is on the app. It’s set in a college environment so it’s a controlled location and supposedly once you tell the app what you want it delivers it to you. Oh go fuck yourself. I’m insulted by how cavalier it just assumes acquiescence. A lot of the hooking up has to do with ‘Oh you want so and so, they’re here go get them’. So one scenario has a meek little loser ending up in an elevator with this hot chick. Now the hot chick doesn’t know anything about the meek little loser but we’re to assume that meek little loser hooks up. Yeah, no.

 

I mean, what the hell do I know? It is college and given how horny you are in college maybe this app works, especially these days with kids so sexualized. Back when I was in college we had ‘Let’s talk about Sex’ by Salt n Pepa and ‘Red Light Special’ by TLC as naughty songs. The most risqué video was the frikkin’ ‘Thong Song’. Now they got WAP. Like basically, they should just come out with a song now that says shove your stuff in my crotch and suck suck suck; call it ‘Suck Suck Suck’. Instead of the ‘Thong Song’ I’m wating for the song called ‘Cervix’. It’ll be five minutes of someone wailing in Autotune ‘Hit my Cervix Harder!’ Regardless, this is a comic and I need a, you know, a story, which would be nice. There’s some flimsy plot about a normal looking dude who has a blah normal looking uppity girlfriend that he ditches for this other hot blonde chick who ignores him but who is probably on the app doing naughty things and gee, I wonder, will he end up doing naughty things with her? Yaaaaawwwn.

 

Yes the hot blonde that grips this normal dude who has zero likability is the chick on the cover with the nipple tape. I would say as a rule of thumb if you see nipple tape at a chick’s place, run. Is there a preferred nipple tape brand or do they just get by with 3M or Scotch tape. I wonder if that’s like a convo in nipple tape circles. Maybe when you see a bunch of scantily clad hotties arguing in a club it’s not about men or where to shop it’s about the pros and cons of using duct tape as nipple tape versus caution tape.

 

Oh, that’s another thing, the roommate of the lead boring loser leaves for the weekend or something and before he goes he leaves a post-it note on a desktop monitor to warn his roomie to not use the Crave app. Are you fucking kidding me? Do you think college kids even know what a ‘post it’ is other than to mean put that reel up of you puking on so and so on your Insta account? And really? A desktop monitor in a college dorm??? Oh yeah, I’m sure college kids are all about old school 15” desktop iMacs, or are they Commodore 64s on their desks? How ridiculous, I’m gonna write a comic about a dating app and use a post-it note on a desktop monitor as a plot device. I suppose in the next issue our lead loser gets a message on his answering machine that he doesn’t get in time and he’s also unable to receive pings on his Motorola two-way pager. Oy vey.

 

Another major gripe that I have is I’m totally taken out of the story by this Maria Lovett person putting her name on a chunk of the panels. What is this shit? Is this a thing now? The dude who did Scott Snyder’s ‘Night of the Ghoul’ did this, some Franky Franachancavilla dude. Is this like comic book artist tagging? I get yanked out of the story when I’m reading it and I see a name on the art, like it just pops my imagination bubble. Look at this:

 

 

Those little circles in the corner, which are all over the comic, have her name in it and the year although the year is 2022 which tells me, hmm, what does it tell me, it tells me that there should still be zero references to post-it notes and fucking desktop monitors!!!

 

I will leave you with this. Here’s the thing with dating apps. I’ve met my share of girls off of the apps. Maybe one or two at most looked like their pictures and of them all maybe only one or two did I feel like I had an actual vibe with. Everybody else was a major disappointment or when we met it felt awkward and wonky despite our dozens of messages that we had sent each other. The reason being is that nothing beats vibe. Nothing beats the feeling you get when you see someone in person for the first time and it’s far more of a surer thing to get that vibe from meeting someone out in the world than it is to connect with them on the illusion that they’re projecting on the app. Period. Yes, I hear from many that this is the organic way of meeting somebody these days and to that I say, go fuck yourself. 

 

 

The tag line of this comic is ‘Tell us what you Crave – We’ll make it happen’. Okay, I crave that all dating apps would go poof and we’d get back to the joy of finding someone in our day to day lives again.

 

Crave? Swipe left.

 

Rating: 5.5

Verdict: Drop

THE BEST COMIC BOOKS OF 2023

 

                  THE BEST COMIC BOOKS OF 2023

Is the Comic Book Industry falling apart? Well, I think you can swap out ‘Comic Book Industry’ and put almost any business model, institution or political party before the words ‘falling apart’ and it would be an apt statement for this past year or two. Yet this year, more than any other, has been in my view one of the roughest years of comic books that I can remember. It just felt waaaay off. I mean, I hear how LCS retailers are constantly complaining about the publishers. I see how stores are closing all over the country. I hear the Comic Book Pundits (am I one? Mmm, not really) decrying the ills and missteps of the industry itself. Fans seem to whining and moaning left and right, what the fuck is going on?

 

Well, I can only speak from the experience of a dude who has been buying comics for over 40 years. What I would say is, mmm, it’s not that it’s falling apart it’s that it’s been reassigned. In other words, comics are means to other ends especially when you’re talking about the Big Poo (the Big 2). For these corporate death stars, comics feed into its inordinate amount of IP offerings that are charted on X & Y Axis graphs and all kinds of business degree mumbo jumbo bullshit that have basically ruined comic books. Sure, the independents are going strong. Wait, no, scratch that, Image is still going strong while other independents thrash and claw for a limited audience with either rehashed characters or gruesome over the top silly horror/sexy books. Dark Horse got bought out by a gaming company and their titles have also sunk to new lows of blecchh. Even Image, as wonderful as they are, didn’t knock a lot out of the park this year.

 

Here’s the bottom line for me: I bought 150 comic books this year. That’s the lowest amount of comics I’ve purchased since I started keeping track of it about 15 years ago. Back in the heyday of 2016-2018 I was buying over 300 comics a year. So what happened? Well, Marvel got bought out by Satan aka Disney and their comics became all but unreadable. 

 

I seriously root for Disney’s stock to crater every day with the hopes that, I dunno, they sell Marvel cuz they need the cash or don’t care anymore? DC? I dunno either, last year was the year of their amazing run of Black Label titles, this year? Pure poop. I don’t think anyone knows what the fuck to do or how to do it over in DC and it shows. Their recent Aqua Turd movie is dead in the water as was most of the garbage they put out this year. So when you have the Two Pillars of the Industry mired in caca it fucks things up for everyone else. One would think “oh there’s now a void to fill because Marvel & DC are churning out titles that look like the pink goo that they make McNuggets with” but it’s actually the opposite. Hate on them as much as you want but Marvel & DC are comic books. If they’re going strong everybody is going strong because that means butts in the Comic Book shops which means more sales of the independent offerings.

 

Here’s another reason why I bought less books: y’all raised the prices a bit too much. See, back in the day I could jump on a book for 5-6 issues, grab a mini-series for 4 issues, try out a series and spend about $15, woop dee doo. Now, every story arc/mini series is like $25-30, hmm, yeah fuck that! If issue one sucks, buh to the bye homie. Now I’ll check out the solicits for future issues to see what’s going on with the plot before I decide to pick something up whereas before I wouldn’t care, I’d just add it to my pull and read the whole series, because, well, I love comics. But I’m not trying to spend over $100 a month on comics right now especially since most of them are so disappointing. So with the quality of books in the toilet and the prices up it makes for a very nasty combination.

 

Mark Millar, who I’m not a big fan of but who I deeply respect as guy who loves comics, had this to say on what he thinks should be the fix for the industry

 

Mark Millar's Comic Book Plan

 

I wouldn’t know if this would work or not but it’s clear to me that something has to change. Somebody has to come in and clean fucking house at the Big 2 like Javier Milei is doing in Argentina. I need a Comic Book Geek of the People to go in the same way that Javier did and get rid of all the Editors and Ideological Fuckwits that have ruined Hero Books.

 

Yo Marvel and DC Dipshit Editors? AFUERA!

 

There’s a guy who makes amazing videos about the Comic Book Industry. I would say he is the true voice of reason for Comic Book Geeks like myself and it’s clear that he loves comics as much as anyone. I remember watching a video of his where he said that the Big 2 were more interested in the Variant Cover market than they were in actually making good comics. So, that makes a whole lot of sense to me. People are buying up covers at astronomical prices regardless of what’s inside so the more you poop out and the more you create artificial scarcity for them the more shekels you will make. That’s all well and good for your corporate hooker and blow budget but, yeah, sucks for us. If that is what’s really going on then we may not see the end of this downturn for a while until they cut back on these variants. You can check out this dude’s channel here:

 

Thinking Critical 

 

Anyway, as for the ‘Best of the Year’ it was a slog to say the least. Last year I chose a dozen books that were absolutely amazing along with some honorable mentions. This year? I couldn’t even find 10 titles that blew me out of the water. Not even 10 for goodness sake. I went over every week of my pulls and, man, I pulled a lot of stuff that ended up sucking ass. To be clear, this list isn’t of comics that were good, or decent or really good. This is a list of Greatness. This is a list of books that after I put them down I went ‘That was fucking awesome’ If I didn’t feel like that then it’s not on this list. So yeah, not that many to choose from but these did the trick, here ya go…

 

 

8. Deep Cuts - A series of stories that travel through the history of Jazz? Sign me the fuck up! Kyle Higgins and Joe Clark along with some bad ass artists deliver some wonderfully poignant and historically accurate tales that span the early decades of Jazz. I really wish this was an ongoing series rather than a standard ‘Six issues and we’re done’ affair. That’s something that would be exciting to dive into every month. I really loved the sheet music that they included in the back matter and the homage to Blue Note. This was Image's Golden Offering of the Year by far. For some reason they dropped three issues and then stopped in July but it looks like they’re picking up again in January. 

 

 

7. barnstormers - Dark Horse has been reprinting all of Scott Snyder’s Comixology’s Originals Digital Series into 3 issue Drops for the past year or so. One was atrocious (We Have Demons) one was mediocre (Night of the Ghoul) one was really good (Clear) but this one was downright awesome. I’d say the main reason besides an out of the box story of a death defying pilot and his forbidden love on the run is Tula Lotay’s spectacularly beautiful art that graced each and every panel. Bonnie & Clyde take to the air! What an absolute joy to read. Snyder’s got another one that just started, ‘Canary’ and so far it’s also a great first issue. Go Scott Go!

 

 

 

 

 

6. The Avengers: War Across Time - The best thing Marvisney put out all year by far was a Retro Series. What a fucking blast it was to read a story that hit on all the right notes from the Golden Era of Comics! They dusted off some dude named Paul Levitz who was probably busy noshing on a pastrami sandwich at Katz’s Deli and made him pop out a paean to what made hero books great: bright colors, silliness, goofy and sexy dialogue, gravitas, time machines and buildings and streets that were always being destroyed or spewing lava men. I’ve been saying for years that Marvisney should just publish monthly facsimile issues of their great titles like Spidey & FF & The Avengers on a monthly basis so it could give us the feeling that we’re reading them as if we were living back in the 60s when they first came out. But that would be too much fun, so, that won't work these days.

 

 

 

 

5. Love Everlasting - The second arc of what very well might be Tom King’s masterpiece of a series upped the ante and the wow factor on what already was a perfectly executed story of Joan Peterson and the multiple timelines of deadly love that follows and torments her through all of her lives in all of the different eras that she has lived in. Written in the style of a dimestore comic book romance this mind trip of a book just kept getting better and better from issue to issue. It’s one of those rare books that you really get excited about when you see a new issue pop up on the solicits. Elsa Charretier is officially an Art Super Star and I will follow her work wherever she goes. I will also say that so far King's first few issues on Wonder Woman are quite good, the best Dubz story I’ve read in ages! Tom King comin’ wit da ruffneck bidness in the two three boyeee.

4. Batman: City of Madness - It was a really tough year for my homie Bats. I just could not get into anything that he was in. All the books were just blah or refried plot beans. Sean Murphy ended his beyond brilliant White Knight run on a ‘ehh, that was cool but not great’ note then handed it off to his wonderful wife and a putz who wrote a series about the Joker’s kids which I couldn’t stomach. I suffered month after month begging the Comic Book Universe to deliver me a majestic Bat Book and it finally answered my prayers at the very end of the year with Christian Ward’s eye popping beast of a book. My goodness, give this man an ongoing series for the next five years! In a year of cheap fake meat Bat burger stories this was the Wagyu patty with the Goldleaf Bun story that beat the bejeezus out of them all. Hopefully this is the beginning of a new run of great Black Label titles.

 

 

 

 

 

3. Rare Flavours - The creative team behind one of the best comics of the decade ’The Many Deaths of Laila Starr’ returned with another magical tale that invoked the earthly representation of another Hindu deity. This time around it’s a Raksha or demon that fancies itself as a type of cannibalistic Anthony Bourdain. Each issue just feels like an event as you’re transported away from your life and immersed into a fully realized elevated world of monstrous beauty. I feel like these two had a conversation that went something like 'Should we tell the Demon Bourdain story now or should we wait?' as if they were waiting for the perfect moment to unleash this gem of a story on humanity.  Ram V and Filipe Andrade have that uncanny artistic synergy that doesn’t come along very often in comics. Catch them while you can. 

2. A Vicious Circle - Only one issue of this mind blowing three issue series was released this year, over six months after its first issue which was released in December of 2022 but oh what a fucking issue it is. The art in this comic is absolutely astonishing. Lee Bermejo puts on a clinic on how to turn a comic book into art gallery material. I suppose with the amount of assumed work and attention to detail that went into each of the first two issues it’s understandable why it takes them so long to release them. Mattson Tomlin’s exhilarating time jumping story of mortal enemies does more than enough to keep up with Bermejo’s legendary work. A book like this puts publishers and creators on notice. This is how it’s done. This is how you make a statement to the world on why comic books matter. Despite it being limited to only three issues this is a time traveling book for the ages.

1. Conan The Barbarian - By Crom you did it! You wrested the Conan license away from the evil clutches of Marvisney and showed the entire planet how to make a Hero Book. True, this Cimmerian isn’t like the heroes of neon tights and inter-galactic superpowers but make no mistake, this Barbarian slashed his way through those mangy curs to the top of the heap of the comic book world this year. Oh, what a joy to experience the true unbridled love that the creators of this comic most certainly have for this character and for them to have the courage to present him in all of his glory. In a pathetic world where nitwits, meager mealy mouthed toads and spindly cowards froth at the mouth with their idiotic claims of toxic masculinity, Titan Comics had the balls to say ‘Yeah, fuck that, here’s Conan’. 

 

And yes, it wasn’t just their approach, Jim Zub’s writing and Roberto De La Torre’s art was as perfect a match for Conan as you could ask for. What an absolute triumph. If you’ve never read a Conan story before you could actually pick up the first arc of this book and know exactly what it’s like to read one of the best from the past as it feels just as authentic as any of Robert E. Howard’s offerings. Perhaps this is the future of comic books. Is it possible for a group of hyper excited artists and writers to somehow get the licenses from all of our favorite heroes and start them over for us? Can we join Conan on his pirate ship with Belit and do a hostile takeover of the Hulk, Spidey and Iron Man? Can we have Scott Snyder and Christian Ward storm DC's offices with guns blazing and take Batman from them? 

 

Is this the way? Will there need to be a Comic Book Civil War? Drastic times call for drastic measures. Titan's 'Conan' reminded me how amazing it is to read a heroic tale. Yes, all genres can be found in comics but it's the heroes that really shine the most. It's the heroes that we can't find in our world, lifting buildings, shooting lasers out of their eyes, flying above us, it's these heroes that we find next to the staples of the pages of our favorite childhood titles that inspire us the most. And yes, we're adults and we have jobs and responsibilities now that go beyond these tales. Yet these tales remind us of what can be, not only in the world but within ourselves. They reminds us that life is a magical journey where anything can happen at any moment. The improbable victories over evil that we read in the pages of strong iconic heroes can somehow give us what we need to overcome the obstacles that we face in our lives.

And so as we turn the page on another year I see hope for a return to this glorified experience of reading comics that sit in our hands, not in our computers. I'm not sure how it will happen but I know it's possible. 

“There is always a way, if the desire be coupled with courage,” - Conan

 

Happy New Year - Issac

HEXAGON BRIDGE #1 - Review

Multi-Dimensional Dimensions in our Art is getting Demented. They’re everywhere now. This dimension is right here and that dimension is right over us and this one is through that door and that one is in her pink butthole and if you really wanna find this one hit the El Chato Taco Truck around 2am on a Tuesday and wear fuscia. On on hand, when done right with restraint, having a multi dimensional world where characters are popping in and out of is exciting. I would say the ‘Upside Down’ in Stranger Things is a great example of using an alternative dimension in an amazing way. When done haphazardly and with no constraints it can turn anything into a full out shit show. I’m looking at you Big 2/Big Poo.

 

Marvel used to be the home of the wacky cosmic way out-there comic books where characters like Dr. Strange, Thor and his merry band of Gods dressed in Skandinavian wear and the FF would consistently travel to alternative dimensions with aplomb and gusto. The recent ‘Defenders’ comic written by Al Ewing last year harkened back to that time with a retro tale that traversed the multiverse. Ironically it was entitled ‘Defenders: There are No Rules’; yet it worked because it felt like you were being taken far away from the center in a logical way, not jumping to and fro will nilly, if that makes any sense.

 

When comics turn to poop is when they use the Multi-Dimensional gimmick/device so liberally that reality loses form and any and everything can happen at once. Rules fly out the window and poor writing and plot developments are easily glossed over by:

 

‘Ooh, look we’re somewhere else now’ or

 

‘Ooh, look who are you and where did you come from’ or even worse

 

‘Yeah that story actually didn’t happen here, it happened somewhere else, in another dimension’

 

The Big Poo (DC and Marvisney) have essentially ruined the Multi-Dimensional Device by having so many fucking dimensions with so many alternative versions of characters and planets that you can’t take any of them seriously. I always bristle when I see the character list of a comic on League of Comic Geeks and I see the characters have the denomination of ‘Prime Earth’ or ‘Alterniverse’ or the worst is ‘Earth 613’ really, 613 Earths or timelines where all your poopy stories can find a way to fix themselves after you’ve fallen asleep at the plot wheel? Yeah, fuck off.

 

I can just see that meeting at one of  the Big Poo when the idea of the Multiverse was put forth:

 

Marvisney Demonic Exec: So we can have all these versions of our best characters just pop in whenever we want?

 

Marvisney Demonic Minion: Yup, just call it a different earth.

 

Marvisney Demonic Exec: What about plot continuity?

 

Marvisney Demonic Minion: No need for it, just say you're on a different timeline/dimension.

 

[Several Big Poo execs spontaneously combust]

 

Multi-Dimensionality has also overwhelmed our world as well. I don’t know about you but I constantly hear about us ‘ascending to the fifth dimension’ and that ‘alternative timelines are being averted’ by, oh I dunno, a couple chubbsters in a yoga studio chanting and holding their fingers in a wild configuration while sitting on a pile of cooked mung beans.

 

The ‘Mandela Effect’ also speaks to multiple timelines. That whole thing drives me crazy and also hurts my head to think about. Look, it’s never been the Berenstain Bears it’s always been the Berenstein Bears, always! Where the hell is this ‘Stain’ coming from? Are you kidding me? And it’s Jif! Not Jiffy! Do people actually live in a world where it was Jiffy?

 

One theory I have is, and it is a waaaay out there retro Marvel cosmic theory, is that the wack jobs colliding atoms at CERN in Switzerland with that Hadron Collider actually fucked up and the only way to fix it was to hijack our timeline and sew it onto another timeline because the original timeline had us all exploding into nothingness. So here we are now super imposed onto this other timeline where weird shit happened and we’re arguing with alternative versions of ourselves or friends about whether it was Looney Toons or Looney Tunes, it was Tunes for God sakes!

 

Despite all these timelines and multiple dimensions, I still can’t get a date. Can we have a Mandela Effect where I’m dating and then someone can argue, no way, that guy never gets a fucking date! That would be nice. Somewhere on Earth 2,229,287 I’m dating a super amazing babe, I have a career and courtside Knicks tickets, comic books cost 35 cents and this blog is at the top of your news feed on your phone. Actually scratch that, that would mean I’d have to be writing for it every day, yeah, I’m too busy looking after my little princess.

 

Which finally finally finally brings me to this comic. We’re way in the future and a Mommy and a Daddy are off to find their way into this alternative dimension yet they get lost or captured and the kid in our dimension gets weepy about it. Obviously we have to find Mommy and Daddy now and let's bring our robot along. That's pretty much the premise in a pinch.

 

First off, the title sounds like a Norwegian Fusion Band from the 70s. Like this band would open up for Tangerine Dream. Second, and this is a big Second, the believability of this book went out the fucking window when they listed the year as 4040. Really? 4040? This looks like something that could happen in 2040. You telling me that we live in the same futuristic world in 2040 as we would in 4040. I mean, if you're coming with that 4040 Boom Bap you better have 4040 designs and a whole slew of that imaginative 4040 advancements in technology. How depressing. This is what we have to look forward to 2,000 years from now? C'mon homie, drop the hyperbolic year and just stick to something tangible. 4040 my ass.

 

Despite the absurd year the art is wonderful and I really enjoyed the landscapes of the parallel dimension even though I would’ve liked to have seen a buxom Morgana in a skin tight body suit somewhere in them. Apparently this dude Richard Blake, won a contest or something and I dunno, yadda yadda, up and coming comic book dude yadda yadda. This is him:

 

 

I mean, he’s the dude at a party where you’re like ‘Please do not start talking to me’. He’s drinking an IPA or a Chardonnay and he’s got docksiders on with no socks. His breath reeks of coffee and he wears too much musky cologne. Plus I'm pretty certain they photoshopped his invasive nose hairs out of this picture. At this party, Richard's girlfriend is flitting about and being super flirty with everyone. You can’t tell if she’s cute or not because she’s wearing a dumpy sweater and unflattering Capri pants, but you can picture these two banging each other and she's definitely a lot of fun in the sack. You figure she probably cooks a mean breakfast in the morning and that's when you realize Richard Blake has been talking your ear off for 10 minutes in a row while you've been fantasizing about his girl.

 

Yup, that's what I was thinking after I finished this issue. It went by really fast. This is one of those Image ‘Spaghetti Books’ where they’re just throwing it at the wall to see if it sticks. It sticks, a bit. There’s a piece of the pasta that’s elongated out from the wall, dangling aimlessly, just waiting for you to peel it off. I’m intrigued enough to see if it falls or not. Or maybe what I’ll do is rip it clean off the wall which will cause a schism between two parallel worlds! I’ll walk through the spaghetti fissure and track down my Earth 2,229,287 self in the bathroom at Madison Square Garden. I’ll strangle him to death and then make my way to courtside where my gorgeous lady friend awaits me dressed in a purple Knicks get-up. Problem is, I’ll be sitting next to Richard Blake. He’s sipping his IPA and interrupting me throughout the game as he tells me about exciting second arc that’s selling like hotcakes. I’m about to leave this annoying dimension until Richie tells me he’s buying Marvisney and DC with his Hexagon profits and hiring a consortium of comic geeks as editors. That’s when I fly out of my seat to go find the me that I murdered in this dimension. I need to dispose of him quickly so I won’t have to answer any questions. Then I can stay here, read great Marvel books, watch my Knicks courtside and hit on Richard Blake’s frumpy girlfriend who insists she’s polyamorous. 

 

Somewhere right now in multiple dimensions Richard Blake is sipping on ethically sourced mold free coffee ($42 a bag, whole bean) and listening to Chet Baker as he writes his Hexagon opus. With Richie, he's the same in every dimension, nothing changes except his frumpy girlfriend's wardrobe. I respect your consistency Mr. Blake. I'll read your opus so that I can critique it when we bump into each other at that party on Earth 5,432. In that dimension we get into a fight over your Frumpy but with me critiquing your work you're too busy brooding in a corner over your Zima to notice me hustling Frumpy into the bathroom with me.

Rating: 7.9

Verdict: Pull

 

MONSTRESS #45 - Review

 

  

The face that Maika makes on the cover of this comic book is the face my wallet just made after it bit deeply into my hand and tore off a piece of my flesh. It was the price I paid for clicking to pull this comic yet a-fucking-gain despite everything in my body and mind telling me not to. My wallet went absolutely berserk on me as I pulled this comic out of the plastic bag full of comics, fresh from my LCS. Had I not kicked it down the hallway along with all the cancelled/maxed out credit cards it might have torn off my arms. As it spun away, pieces of my thumb sputtering into its fake leathery teeth, it growled ‘How much more are you going to waste on this book from fucking hell! 200 buckeroos isn’t enough you degenerate! Look at you! Buy yourself a burger and leave this shite for the other poor saps who are duped into reading it!!!’ Okay, maybe my wallet didn’t actually gnash off a digit of mine nor did it come to life as if it was in a Studio Ghibli movie, but it might as well have. Jesus Christmas! Monstress! WTF???

 

I started reading the first few pages of this comic and I hit a fucking wall. I’m completely exhausted by this - I dunno, what is this, it’s not a story anymore, it’s the ramblings of a psychotic schizophrenic manic depressive ADD writer named Marjorie Liu, who’s cute as hell, but who has lost all sense of the basic construct of a plot that moves. I would imagine she has also driven her partner in crime, Sana Takeda, off a cliff. Sana probably prints out the pages of the script that Marj sends here and takes them to a group therapy session in the basement of a church somewhere. When it’s her turn to speak she just bawls and hurls the pages on the floor and wails ‘I have to draw this fucking nonsense!’. 

 

Look at this page of art. It's all static, anger, despair, the plea one of the great comic book artists of our generation

She's saying: GET ME OUT OF HERE!

 

Image is also in a bind. They would have cancelled this comic years ago but they’ve been approached by Junot Diaz, Marj’s hubby, and her team of psychotherapists who have begged Captain Kirky to keep this series afloat lest they send Marj in a suicidal tailspin, this comic being the only thing that gets her through the day. Right now Junot Diaz is in the living room of their Victorian Home in Nantucket, dressed comfortably in soft linens. He takes breaks in his chair by reclining against a cashmere throw pillow that he purchased from a former Emperor of Japan. He types the next great American novel on an old school typewriter while Bach and Chopin plays softly in the background. A Maine Coon purrs at his ankles and a ceremonial matcha latte with macadamia milk wafts wisps of smoke above his mug made from upcycled broken plates from a chateau in Normandy where Lord Byron would write.

 

Marjorie, on the other hand, is up in the attic, naked, shvitzing, grunting, narrowing her eyes at her laptop screen, a screen that she has scraped with her fingernails over and over. Three dozen cats wander about. They whinge and take turns landing on her tousled head as she pumps out a new issue of her avant garde psychedelic mind fuck of a book with no plot. Goldfrapp is on repeat as the thundering bass vibrates her fingers. Fingers that tap out pure and utter lunacy to be read by, me? I don’t think anyone is reading this book anymore.

 

Am I the only who is reading this comic? It feels like I’m the only one. Anybody out there reading Monstress? Is it just me? It’s just me isn’t it. I never see any back issues of this book in my comic book shop, Lord knows this ain’t selling out. Maybe I am the only thing that’s keeping this book afloat. Maybe if I drop it from my pull, Image will call Marj that her lone customer of her book is no more. Marjorie would drop to the floor from her Arne Jacobsen chair and screech until Juno rushed upstairs with an Igloo Cooler full of meds for the moment that he knew was coming.

 

I mean, listen to the recap of this comic that’s written on the inside of the cover:

 

From the astral plane, Maika Halfwolf and her friends and allies [etc] and the ghost of her child self jumped through a portal [through a fucking cat statue in space] and landed in the most unexpected of places [wouldn't the head of the floating cat statue be more of an unexpected place?] Golga, the planet where the Monstra have long been imprisoned [etc] Elsewhere, Ren had stumbled upon a hidden clan of cats [umm what?] with unknown motives [are the motives of cats ever fucking known?] and the ghost of young Maika has been lured away by the Smith Singer [Wait, is Morrissey involved in this now???] a mysterious Monstrum [who sings like Morrissey?] etc.

 

Hasn't it been scientifically proven that having or living with cats makes you certifiably crazy. Like they emit some sort of spore or have certain types of parasites that get into your brain and make you lose your marbles over time? 

 

Am I being too hard on Marjorie? Isn't this still a great book with eye popping art? So what if she's veered off into some outer space inter dimensional prison colony? Maybe Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor will make an appearance! I'll tell you what this is like. Ted Lasso, final season, okay? Remember they had that one episode where they followed Beard on a wild and crazy night throughout London? Through bars and clubs and underground raves with a bunch of crazy characters? It was his episode. Now imagine this, rather than just doing a one off 'Beard' episode they decided to follow Beard's hijinks for another 6-8 episodes straight. Like, he just continued on this crazy journey away from the team. You'd be like, wait a minute, what the fuck? Is this the show now? What happened to Ted's anxiety? When do I get to look at Keely's boobies again and hear Roy Kent tell everyone to fuck off? That's what's happening here. Rather than following the Seaweed God for an issue or so we're stuck in an entirely new world of Seaweed Gods for who knows how long and we've lost the entire connection to the main storyline.

 

I think, we’re at the point in this comic book relationship, that started almost eight frikkin’ years ago, where it’s time to have ‘The Talk’. Of course, I’d be the asshole in this talk because I’d be wanting to wantonly abandon a psychotic deranged miscreant who’s in dire need of love and a credit to the UCLA Writing Program. I should ‘stick it out’ with this book and weather the storm of ‘holy bejeezus what the hell is going the fuck on here’ that has been pelting my eyes with its hailstones for the past several years. When you’ve invested so much, as my wallet would attest, it’s hard to just break it off like a cheap piece of drivel from someone like Kevin Smith, where it’s easy to use his pages as a pee pad for incontinent doggies.

 

I keep looking at the solicits and, fuck, there’s at least another 4 books after this one with no end in sight. I want to read ‘Finale’ in one of the solicits! I want to see an article on aiptcomics.com that details how Marjorie is going to be ending her Monstress run and will be joining Marvisney to write a new arc of She Hulk where Jen takes Ayahuasca and hunts down Bob Iger. Marjorie’s Twitter/Insta hasn’t been updated in almost 4 years! Is this even Marj??? Do we have another AI situation here? I hope so. 

 

I hope that Boston Dynamics’ War Dogs broke into her home and abducted her back in 2019/2020. It would make me feel so much better knowing that the powers that be couldn’t have a beautiful comic such as this exist in the world. Maybe when the AI took over that’s when all these ‘War Arcs’ began which bored me to tears. It’s also the only explanation for how we’re on a prison planet of seaweed Gods that was accessed through the belly of a Cat Monolith in outer space.

 

I feel like I'm at the beginning of a Black Mirror episode where I'm reading this bonkers comic and all of a sudden these wackadoodle seaweed Gods start appearing all over Los Angeles. I'll run outside and point and nobody will see them but me (since I'm the only one who ever read the comic book). A Cat Monolith will then appear and hover over Whole Foods. It will suck me into its belly along with the eggs, hummus, bananas and bag of oatmeal that I bought for $134.

I'll end up on a Prison Planet with the rest of the 11 other comic book readers who were actually reading this book. One by one the Digital Pen of Sana Takeda will appear out of the sky and we'll all be transformed by that pen into Seaweed Gods. We'll wander the skies of other dimensions where Monstress Comics exist waiting for the moment when Marjorie Liu will appear to us. We'll chase her from one world to the next, jumping through Space Cat Bellies and Space Cat Anuses and Space Cat Litter Boxes. Miley Cyrus will join us and she'll sing an AutoTune anthem called 'Seaweed Ball' as we jump through these Cosmic Felines. 

We'll end up as seaweed balls on an elongated dish at a Sushi Restaurant where the Sushi Chefs are Boston Dynamics War Dogs. Headless Riot Grrrls with Bangs will eat us one by one and the episode will end.

 

And I've officially gone Monstress Crazy. Where's Juno with my Meds? Wait, I don't take Meds. Where's Juno with my Monstress Intervention!

 

Rating: 6.1

Verdict: Pull and Pray