The Plot Holes #1 - Review

 

Wow. A new Sean Murphy book! Where did this come from? I heard zero about this comic being released then all of sudden, oompah, a new Murph book on the solicits! Praise Be The Murph! How was the comic book world not pre-empted with oodles of ‘Murphy is dropping another gem’ hype articles? Am I missing something here? Murphy can do no wrong!

 

Punk Rock Jesus! Tokyo Ghost! The frikkin entire Batman: White Knight series! He single handedly created the greatest Bats Alt-Uni ever to the point that DC is like:

 

DC Suit: Please, Murph, White Knight every one of our fucking characters! Like, every single one! Even Mister Mxyzptlk, White Knight his corny ass as well!

 

Word has it you can’t enter the DC Offices without dressing like a White Knight character. I’ve heard that interns just print out drawings of his characters from Tokyo Ghost onto onesies and masks and walk around in them all day long. Maybe I’ll do that for Halloween. I’ll dress up as Punk Rock – wait, I’m Jewish, can’t dress up as Punk Rock Jesus. Maybe I can figure out a Punk Rock Rabbi or Punk Rock Bagel Broker or something.

 

Anyway, I’m wondering why this was so on the down low. After all he’s done for DC you’d think they’d be like ‘Sure dude, print whatever you want with us’. Except, they didn’t. It’s printed at, huh, Massive Publishing, who the fuck are they? Let me look them up, hmm, I don’t recognize any of these – wait, they’re Whatnot? Wait, are they Whatnot publishing or Massive? Pick one for goodness sake. Whatnot has been more like What? - Not. Their Ninja Funk book was an unmitigated disaster from the jump, reviewed here. Why is Murphy hobknobbing with Massive? Can’t Image, the greatest comic book publisher on the planet, hook a bad boy up with 5 issues?

 

I’m always so curious why comic book creators jump from publishers to publisher. I wish they put out Comic Book Creator salaries the way they did with professional sports players so we could argue over whether or not a guy or gal was sufficiently or overly paid or not. I feel like there should be a lot more transparency on how these amazing creators are getting paid. Like, DSTLRY put together some of the baddest Comic Book Superstars for their imprint, yet they’re charging an arm and a leg for their issues. Is this because this is what they need to charge for these creators to actually be paid properly or are they kinda price gouging us and inflating the price to inflate their new approach?

 

Whatever the case may be, I have no idea what this Plotholes book is about and I don’t care. It’s The Murph. I’m fired up to read thi – hmm, what the – okay well, the art is fan-fucking-tastic per usual but what the – okay, hmm. So these characters are like saving books and, hmm, umm, [flip flip fiip] but it’s Murphy! Woo Hoo! Seany Love! Bring the ruck – wait, dude, seriously. Oy. Umm, Seany Murph! The Murphster – the - uggh, really? Okay. Umm, okay, umm. Oy.

 

So, uh, well, umm, yeah this book is kinda wack.

 

I mean, the art, I could take in Murphy art every day and be happy but, yeah, I can see why DC and maybe other Publishers were like ‘Uhh, you got any Silver Paladins or Gold Wizards to pitch us?' Otherwise this ‘Book Heroes’ comic is a pass. Real quick on the premise: A rag tag group of literary misfits led by an elderly ‘Jane Fonda type’ jump from unpublished book (in imagination land) to unpublished book to save the books from their obvious flaws so that they ultimately get published.

 

The obvious response to this premise is 'Well, you should send these plot savers to both DC & Marvisney to save the comic book universe first', but that's probably too on the nose. 

 

I feel like this is one of these ideas where if I met Murphy for a coffee in La La Land and he told me his idea I’d be like ‘Dude, that’s really cool like, wow, so out of the box’ but I’d be validating my parking and thinking ‘Dude, is Murphy losing it?’. Because you can’t tell Murphy he’s got a butt butt idea, you just have to trust that the guy is going to make it work. But this idea feels so, I dunno, like a promotional approach you’d read in pamphlets and placards at a library trying to encourage kids to read more. It doesn’t feel grounded at all and the group is so disparate that it’s not cohesive by any stretch of the imagination.  Not to mention that the first issue centers around them saving a kid who makes comic books from his world being destroyed; a little too meta for me.

 

The ‘Something Epic’ series that Szymon Kudranski is putting out that’s ongoing right now is also engaging is a similar approach towards the whole idea of “What happens to imaginative creations when they’re not finished?” a brilliant concept. However, five issues in and it’s getting a little cornball what with the lead doing battle in the world of discarded imaginative creations, it just feels a little goofy.

 

The greatest comic to ever majestically triumph over the deconstruction of the entire literary construct was ‘The Unwritten’. My goodness, that comic was beyond phenomenal. Did you read it? If not, drop what you’re doing and read this scintillating mind blowing series that should get annual awards for being so fucking amazing:

 

I mean, when a comic does something to perfection like this one it’s hard to take anything else really seriously unless it shatters another mold and takes it to another level. Murphy’s ‘Plot Holes’ doesn’t really do that. The world and the devices he uses are, well, flimsy. A meter with a percentage on it that has dwindled to almost zero which indicates that, from what I can gather, that the world of digital books and the ability for this group to fix them is about to vanish? Yeah, I'm not buying it.

 

Plus the oddball assortment of characters from various genres feels like he and his beautiful and talented wife Katana were up getting high and just threw out a bunch of different archetypes to be included. I mean, one of them looks like a Calvin and Hobbes reject and none of them are even close to being fully developed. There’s some wonky large alien ‘Dune’ worm that’s jumping from book to book and destroying them, I dunno, as I said, feels like a Library Marketing Approach.

 

 

Now, despite all of this I am on board for subsequent issues. It is Sean Murphy after all and if anyone can rescue a premise and turn it into a – wait, what is he doing, he’s doing a Zorro series next with Matt Hollingsworth? Umm, hmm, Murphy! Woo hoo! Oy. Is this like him owing something to the people who are behind Massive Publishing and Whatnot so rather than give them his gems he’s just giving them some throw-away stories? Like, is this comic in the vein of Prince’s ‘Chaos and Disorder’ when he just pooped out an album to finish off his Warner Brothers contract so he could own all of his own masters?

 

I did a little digging and it seems this comic was crowd funded back in the summer of 2020 and made $250 K. Wow. Maybe Murphy freaked out during the lockdowns and was like ‘Dude, I gotta get a book funded and made, my White Knight life is over!’. Here's the IndieGoGo link for that campaign:

 Plot Holes Crowd Funding

 

Maybe Murphy is too busy working on completely destroying the JLA/Wonder Dubz White Knight books that he doesn’t have time to make his own premises sparkle. He’s still doing that right? Well of course he is. Maybe this is his ultimate shell game. Look over here as I put out some middling books at a wack imprint while I completely overhaul the entire DC Universe with my White Knight brilliance. Maybe this group of Plot Holes heroes is a wink to his actual team of rebels who are hacking away at the DC decay that's been ongoing since the beginning of this year.

 

Maybe it's a good thing this didn't get picked up by DC or Marvisney. If it did the series would probably have to be changed to 'The Sinkholes'.

Rating: 6.3

Verdict: Pull for now

NINJA FUNK #1 - Review

  

As stated in previous posts, I root for the little guy in Comics. That doesn’t necessarily mean I support the little guy. The Big Boys are gonna take a lot of flak for putting out junk, looking at you Marvisney, but they’re the Big Boys for a reason and they can take the heat and the losses. What I’m dishing out to them isn’t even heat by their standards it’s more like a ‘What’s that weird smell’ when they exit onto Buena Vista street in Burbank. I was actually in Burbank yesterday for a voiceover gig for a Video Game on Buena Vista street just north of Disney. As I passed their main entrance I rolled down the the window of my Old School 79 Camaro and yelled ‘Stop ruining my childhood comic books Satan!’. Satan then whispered in my ear to give She Hulk on Marvisney Plunk a try; gotta give it up to their persistence.

 

At any rate, look, the market is overflowing with new series and creator owned books; a plethora of ‘ooh what’s this’. Books are all on a short leash, it’s three, four, five maybe six issues and then a ‘hold on’ so they can check the numbers before letting the series continue again at a new Number One issue for it’s “second arc”. Publishers are acting like serial daters on Tinder, just throwing mini series out there like they just purchased a couple hundred ‘Super Likes’. If they get a hit, great, if not, there’s another big bootied creative director in West LA who likes Wine Bars and 90s jams juuuuust around the corner…waiting on a line…that stretches all the way to Greyhound depot in Downtown LA; the fresh off the boat babe choo choo.

 

What that means for us as comic geeks is that we have to be picky. We can’t just snatch up every new shiny series with a bajillion variants or our comic book budget would be in the high three digits every month. So, if you want in on our hallowed pull list you better come with the goody good wowza biznasty or you’re getting your wine loving butterfly tat on the ankle ass dropped. We don’t care how big your office is, it’s an even playing field, streaming, all of it, wow us or buh-bye. I say all of this because Ninja Funk is a shiny new series fresh off the boat with a bottle of chardonnay and a Chinese character tat on the back of its neck vying for my attention. It worked…for a second.

 

So remember when you were in High School and there was that kid who sat in the back of the class all the time? He wore a jean jacket and had a bunch of pins and patches on it? He had longish hair, acne, a bizarre odor. He would never pay attention he would just doodle in his notebook all during class. You’d sit by him sometimes and peer over at his notebook and there’d be all these crazy black and white sketches of weird monsters and aliens and girls with big tits straddling dragons and rocket ships. You would think, ‘hey that’s pretty good’. But you wouldn’t think ‘wow I should talk to my buddy at gym class whose Dad works at DC and have stinky metal weirdo submit his notebook to them'. That’s what it feels like happened here. Stinky Metal Weirdo got his notebook to this new imprint called Whatnot and rather than forward him a discount to The Kubert School of Cartooning and Graphic Art they went ‘Dude! Righteous Scribbles! Let’s pop this puppy out there!’

 

You know you’re in a bit of trouble when the synopsis on the solicits starts off the description of the story by extolling the fact that David Mack is doing a Variant Cover for the book. Honestly, that’s what also hooked me, I love David Mack. Every David Mack cover is a work of art and I wish he would get back to making comics again but that’s another story. Here’s the description:

 

A fun, high stakes adventure weaved together with face-melting beats, Ninja Funk follows a ragtag band of misfits as they attempt to save a universe that's off-key.

 

Now that would have been cool, if they released a free track online of that face-melting beat to read along with the comic. That would have been really interesting. As it stands, I have zero idea what’s happening or what’s going in the first few pages. There’s a cat that’s flying around and pooping on everything, which is triggering to me because there’s wild cats all over my neighborhood doing the same thing; not flying but who knows what’s going on at 4am. The art is straight sketch book misfit vibe from 1995 replete with the babe in the futuristic outfit with the perky boobies. The vibe reminded me of this play by Sam Shepard called ‘Tooth of Crime’ but, you know, without the genius of Sam Shepard. I flipped forward a bit and that was that. I just walked out of this comic like walking out of a movie.

 

I just checked the solicits and there are a ton of new shiny butterfly tat exciting titles coming out next week: there’s a new Kindt, a Bermejo oversized prestige edition, a new fangled Iron Man from Marvisney that I will take a deep breath and take a peek at. So NinjaCatPoop ain’t gonna make it. Ninjafunk sounds like the name of an email address you would get from somebody in the 90s. Like ninjafunk@hotmail or even worse at earthlink.

 

You got a friend request from NinjafunkCatPoop on Friendster! Next up on our battle of the underground Emcees it’s Eminem vs Ninjafunk! You’ve got mail! It’s from CatNinjaLitterBox and it has an attachment, it’s a second issue!  

 

Whatnot publishing. Hmm, maybe they’ve truncated their actual name. Maybe it’s WHATthehellisthisi’mNOTsurewhyIshouldkeepreadingit.

 

Rating: 2.5

Verdict: Drop