WHAT'S THE FURTHEST PLACE FROM HERE #13 - Review

Oy this book. This fucking book. What am I gonna do with this fecuchte book? Is it over? This issue felt twice as heavy, I wondered if they were wrapping it up and putting me out of my misery. I should have dropped this book months ago. I’m 12 issues and 50 bux in but under any other circumstance this book gets a solid droperoo rating at the end; but I can’t. This comic is like a batshit crazy actress who stains your upholstery with her running mascara because she cries every 15 minutes. She screeches and bellows all your dirty secrets to the neighbors while she stumbles out of your apartment every time she visits. She kicks your car wheels with her vintage cowboy boots and spits on your windshield until she realizes that she’s doing that to her Uber not your car and then wails for you to tell her where you parked. Yet despite this erratic behavior you still find yourself coming back to her because – well, dammit she makes life interesting doesn’t she?

 

Well guess what this book just did to me? This is some unprecedented comic book fuckery if you ask me. It just hacked my blog and short circuited my auto-save function somehow and my whole post just went poof! into thin air. This has never happened before. Clearly Bossburger (my conjunctive name of convenience for Tyler Boss and Matt Rosenberg) sniffed out that I was about to lambaste their book once more and made a call to, I dunno, who owns blogspot, let me check. Google owns blogspot? Fuck. How am I even alive with all the shit talking I do about Disney? I’m sure I’m on a list somewhere. Bob Iger probably gets alerts every time I wish for Disney’s stock price to drop under 60 which he knows would be the magical number for him to completely sell the Marvel license away to a consortium of billionaire comic geeks who would restore it back to its proper glory. Anyway, I just wrote an entire review absolutely destroying the thirteenth issue of “What’s the Furthest Place from Writing a Coherent Fucking Story” and somehow it just disappeared.

 

So I got to thinking. These Bossburger Hipster Flat White drinking climate activists who say they love Liz Phair but have never listened to her music, are they even real? I mean look at them, do they seem real to you?

 

Notwithstanding the fact that they look like extras from Ozark (amazing show) if you asked AI to come up with an image of a cool hip writing duo of modern comics beholden to the Image brand who spit out maddening content that hooks you despite its blatant disregard for basic story structure this is one of the wackadoodle images it would create; except their arms wouldn’t look human. Now it’s all coming together for me, now it makes sense, Bossburger have and always been an AI comic book experiment. C’mon! A dystopian future of kid tribes and tall figures in puritanical dresses with deformed faces??? This reeks of AI content. So AI is now winding its way, like those tentacle machines in the Matrix, to my humble abode in LA and shorting out my laptop.

Also, my Insta feed is back to showing me 3 second videos of half nekkid girls jiggling for no reason. I don’t know why. I look at ten Prince videos, ten videos of Kamala Harris babbling like an incoherent crack addict at a beauty pageant and one video of a cute girl and boom, it’s Jiggle world. Clearly the Bossburger AI is just wanting to torment me and make my life miserable. Why would half nekkid babes jiggling their kibbles and booty bits make me miserable? Dude, it shorts out your nervous system. If you were just walking around your hood with your doggie and every time you looked across the street a half nekkid babe jiggled and disappeared by the time you got home you’d be a mess. Plus you'll find yourself out in the world getting disappointed when you don't see jiggly babes. Like, you'll be at Whole Foods and a wave of sadness will come over you. You'll ask yourself 'Why am I sad all of a sudden?'. You'll realize it's because you were expecting to see jiggly babes in front of the nut butter and jam section and instead all you saw was a squat hammer toed masked-up agro chick with blue hair and copious amounts of daddy issues. I totally blame this on the Bossburger AI.

 

Uggh, I totally don’t remember what I wrote about this issue. Let me think, so once again the Bossburger AI is deciding to isolate and focus on two characters who are now trapped in an abandoned zoo with a bunch of degenerates. The two plot their escape over and over only to be foiled until one final attempt where something happens; I will not spoil it. Needless to say I am rooting for these characters to find their way to freedom because they mirror my passionate deep desire for this comic to find it’s way back to the main fucking story line!

 

Run! Run you half baked characters from Chat GPT Land! Run and find your way to the A Story! Escape from this mindless zoo of inconsequential sequential art and find your way back to the world of cliffhangers and story arcs! Back to the world of Forward Stories! Not Back Stories! This comic should be called ‘Baby got Back Stories!’ or maybe ‘Backstory to the Future…that never fucking comes!’ If this comic had a theme song it would be ‘I Won’t Backstory Down’ by Tom ChatGPeTty.

 

And yet despite all this mishegas when issue 14 hits the stands I’ll be all over it like a USC sorority at a hip new Ramen restaurant opening in K-Town. This AI World is quite the world and I must find out what the hell is going on. It's like I'm in an escape room in K-Town. I've paid fifty bucks and the clues are preposterous and make zero sense. I want to leave. I'm waving where I think the hidden cameras are so that the slobs eating hot cheetos and laughing at me will activate a speaker that tells me how to exit and give up. But I won't. I'll find my way out of this mess to when it's over. I'll hate myself for doing it but I'll feel a sense of accomplishment as well. Holy shit. I survived the Bossburger AI comic. If I can get through this story I can get through any st - well, not any story. I can't get through Marvisney's pathetic books - ow! My laptop just - ow! I think I just got shock - ow! Oh shit the power just w

 

Murder Inc.: Jagger Rose #2 - Review & The Nut Police

 

I’m now two issues into this mini-series, or should I say series because every frikkin’ comic is a mini-series in the current world of short leashes. I feel a little lost in this whole Jagger Rose comic by Bendis and co. I definitely get the sense that you need to have some sort of context or connection to previous issues and editions of this Murder, Inc. opus in order to fully get what’s going on here. Look, I love me some Bendis, gimme gimme. Add in the fact that Michael Avon Oeming and Taki Soma’s art and colors are a delicious feast for the eyes and I should be all in on this book - but I really have no idea what’s what. It's like I've been dropped into the middle of The Godfather Pt. II and Michael is telling Fredo that he broke his heart without having seen any Godfather stuff prior to that scene.

 

I get that this is some sort of fictionalized future where the Mob controls half of the U.S? Umm, we call that ‘The Government’ in present time, but whatever. The mechanisms and hierarchy of this new landscape really isn’t laid out for new readers. We start the second installment where they’re now at the Vatican and the Pope is some Nuyorican Soul Sistah from Brooklyn which is fine by me but I have zero idea how she connects with the main characters or what she really wants or how a Soul Sistah from Brooklyn got to be the Pope. I’m just gonna assume they put out a casting call for the Pope in LA & NY and nothing but Soul Sistahs showed up because they knew old white dudes would never sniff a line of that part, because, duh, they would be racist for showing up to the casting. C’mon people, get with 2023.

 

The cast of mob characters and shady shysters that are now at the Nuyorican (which is the new name for the Vatican and that’s fine by me as well, two snaps and a mm mmm for the Nuyorican high holy poetry slam on Sundays) always seem to reference some ill shit that happened a while ago yet I don’t know what that shit was. They always look at this Jagger chick with a look like ‘Gurl, you know what you did’ and I have no idea what she did other than get drawn perfectly by M to the A to the O. Do you think Oeming calls himself that or do you think one of his friends ever says that to him? They should. Is one of his nicknames Mao? These are things I’m thinking about rather than trying to figure out the backstory of this book.

 

The best moment of the comic for me was when one of the Mob dudes suggested that everybody should be mandated to either nut or rub one out before leaving their house in the morning in order to take the edge off of people. Don’t believe me? Here it is.

 

 

 

I definitely like that idea but it’s a bit presumptuous. If someone is already in a good flow of nutting and jizzing they can probably take a morning off here and there especially if they had a solid Nut Night before. If they really want to mandate nutting what they need to do is to have the Nut Police (they need to enlist the Nut Police but that should be easy) enforce a Nut when someone is acting like a complete uptight asshole or seems way too high strung; that would make the world a much much better place to live in. You could also have a Citizen Nut Arrest where people just get fed up over someone being an asshole and find a way to get them a nut or hand them over to a Nut Cop.

 

Like if you’re at Whole Foods and someone is carping at somebody for having a few items over the express lane limit and making a scene about it a Nut Cop could then come over and issue them a Nut Ticket where they have to Nut within the next hour or face a hefty fine. Then you can have the government have Nut Centers or Nut Pods all over the city for people to Nut as soon as they need to. This puts subsidies into the Ho Industry which is much needed. The Nut and Jizz subsidies should then replace the sugar, corn, soy and wheat subsidies that the government is currently involved in that is making everyone sick, inflamed, fat and downright yucky (that’s the technical term).

 

I’ve always maintained that if they just offered a well regulated Ho industry to the club scene that there’d be a whole lot less drama and poor choices made by dudes as they venture out into the night. See, if normal horndog dudes in their 20s would just hit a Nut Pod or a Ho Hostel before going out to the bars and clubs they’d be a whole lot less amped to get some ayass and they’d be much more relaxed and happy having just nutted. This way the bars and clubs would be more festive and laid back versus the agro tense vibe that most spots tend to have. Anyway, an uhhhmayzing idea proferred by Bendis via Mob Douchebag #1, but I’m dropping this book. I pulled four completely new series this week and I don’t have any room for a WTF is Going On book right now. Catch you on the next one Bendy. You too M.A.O. Tse Scribbly!

 

Rating: 6.5

Verdict: Drop

THE INCREDIBLE HULK #1 (782) - Review

 

 

What was the first comic book you bought on your own with your own money? Do you remember? I do. I don’t mean when you were with your parents and you asked them for money or asked them to buy something for you. I mean when you had an actual dollar (or maybe just 50 cents) in your pocket and were with some of your friends or even by yourself. You were staring at that spinning comic rack trying to decide which comic to choose, all those covers beckoning and overwhelming you with their colorful capes and tights. I remember that moment very distinctly. I was up visiting my cousins in Montreal and one day we all walked to a comic shop nearby on our own. I was a tiny runt of a kid with a bowl haircut and big eyes and was thrilled to tag along. They were huge Richie Rich fans and might have had every single Richie Rich or derivative title that had ever been published with the character. When we got to the shop they went straight for those but I had other ideas. At first I thought Batman but then I saw this cover that just stood out from all the rest. I’m not sure why but I had to have it, didn’t even flip through the pages, rushed to the cashier and tinkled out some change on the counter; I had just bought my first comic book. It was this:

 

 

Since that day I became a bonafide Hulk fanatic. Made sense. The idea of a nerdy smart guy who was bullied and picked on by macho army people could just turn into a green ball of fists and fury spoke to kids like me who had to look up at everyone in the world:

 

‘Yeah, mess with me and maybe I’ll turn into a whirling dervish of slaps, kicks and rippling earth fist pounds’. 

 

The Incredible Hulk became the real start of my comic book collection. It was the first comic I ever subscribed to. It was the comic title I looked for the moment I walked into a comic shop with back issues. I loved it. I would say that all the issues in the 70s and 80s were pure gold. The basic storylines were: The Hulk is misunderstood. Humans always react with anger and guns. Now you’re in trouble because you messed with the Jade Giant. The Hulk just wants to be left alone. What’s not to love? The Hulk was different than other Marvel heroes in that he didn’t want to be a hero in his own title, he just wanted peace and quiet and could leap from zip code to zip code in order to find it.

 

Nuff said? Look, I own over 400 issues of the Hulk. I should own more but I’ve not been inclined to pick up any of the issues of the past decade or so. I’m always reading every single ‘First Issue’ that Marvisney poops out when they start with a new premise or new creative team. The recent reboots were mnyeh for me. I was there for the ‘Immortal Hulk’ horror type run which everyone seemed to love, not me. It felt like an abysmal distortion of the Hulk. I was there for the Cates run which started off quite decently then descended into gore and ridiculousness. And yes, I’m here for this one. I’d like to go on the record as saying that I want to love this book. I want to get excited for a new Hulk comic every month. I want to feel giddy every time I peel open an issue of the Hulk. Same goes for Bats or any of the Marvisney Properties that have gone to shit. I’m not looking to be upset. I want to be wowed.

 

Well, I’m not wowed.

 

Sigh. Deep exhale. Sigh.

 

Yeah, so, this new Hulk comic sucks like Hunter Biden’s nostrils being tased in front of a mound of coke. This is pure and utter Hulk trash. What. The Actual. Fuck. Could the Buscema Brothers storm the Marvisney Offices and Hulk Smash their way into extracting this property out of the demonic clutches of this corporate death cult?

 

We start off with what looks like a bunch of college kids raiding an archaeological tomb site for jewels in Iraq where a sound effect of a scrape and a poom gets them into a wide open area with an enormous realistic looking muscular idol with a frieze above him and a half dozen mummies underneath him. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that if this much amazingness was found and in clear view the Iraqi government would have armed guards stationed everywhere and there’d be no way for a bunch of Jinkies Scooby Doo kids to easily scrape poom their way in. Of course one of the kids looks at a skull and gets possessed as her eyes glow and her head twists 180 degrees. The idol comes to life and then eats a kid. This ain’t your Leader/Doc Samson/Jarella comic with the Hulk, this is the new trend of horrific gross nasty twisted gore that seems to have overtaken our culture. Oh, it gets worse.

 

First, Banner looks like he was drawn by Jeff Lemire. Look at him:

 

 

 

Is that not Lemire-esque or what? I wish Jeff Lemire was writing this. Is Fraction available? Too many anal beads up his bum for him to write? How about Ta-Nehisi Coates? Bendis? Anybody worth their salt wanna write for Marvisney again? Oy. So Banner is doing his ‘I’m roaming the earth to prevent people from interacting with the Hulk’ bit, okay, great. Love it. So after freaking out in a café and seeing people possessed he runs and then wakes up in a forest half-naked – with what looks like a half eaten dog near him. What. The Actual. Fuck. Are you implying The Hulk ate a fucking dog??? Should I pay the $39.95 to the online ‘Find this guy’ site so I can locate P.K. Johnson’s address and shove some kibble up his ass? Are you kidding me?

 

Next we get a couple of kids working on their Hillbilly Dad’s old beater car. For some reason that sets Hillbilly Dad off to the point where he has to drive after one of the kids and attempt to run them over…for working on his car? So, Daddy’s asleep, kids work on his car, he then gets in said car, which wouldn’t have worked had kids not worked on it and chases them down. Hillbilly Dad crashes the car, gets pummeled by the little kid like she’s George Foreman. Hillbilly Dad then gets possessed and eats – another dog or animal of some kind??? So that’s two animal meals, a couple of possessions and an Alien type chest burst.

 

Oh yeah, three random adults who are apparently affiliated with the FBI go into the forest to look for the Hulk and then one of them has a possessed dead skull animal burst out of his chest which then goes to chase down the Hulk. I think this dead skull animal is what gets eaten by the Hillbilly Dad and whatever possessed the animal now possesses the Hillbilly. Dude. C’mon. Like, seriously, do you need therapy? Are you not getting laid? This is all so fucking gross and disgusting, like, what was the pitch meeting like?

 

PKJ: So then an animal bursts out of the guy’s chest

 

Marvisney: Who eats the animal?

 

PKJ: Huh?

 

Marvisney: We’ve done our research and if you get two animal chow downs in an issue it boosts sales by 37%.

 

PKJ: Oh, cool, well maybe the –

 

Marvisney: The little girl! She eats the animal and turns into a pop star in leopard prints!

 

PKJ: Hmm, maybe the dad –

 

Marvisney: Then she comes to my house and makes me pasta in her underwear while –

 

PKJ: I’ll get the Dad to eat the animal thingy, I’m on it.

 

 

I think the worst part of the entire book, which is saying something, is when Banner transforms into the Hulk. It’s so grotesque and goofy. Look at one of the panels:

 

It’s like straight out of the Simpsons right? Then the Hulk says ‘This body’s mine’. Yuck. That line just rankled me to the core. It’s demonic, as if the Hulk is reveling over the fact that he can take Banner over which has never been what the Hulk is and should be about. I’m seriously about to hurl at this point. What an absolute crock of shite. I suppose this entire dung pile of pages is justified by the Author’s letter at the end of the comic when he goes on to say:

 

This story you’re about to read – sees Hulk walking through our world, unearthing ancient terrors and mysteries to which most of us are blind. It’s rage, violence and all the dark, profane things that watch us from watery graves, condemned laboratories, potters fields and cosmic hellscapes.

 

Blecch. Seriously, if you want the Hulk to unearth ancient terrors and dark profane things to which most of us are blind why don’t you send him to the Marvisney Offices? I mean, it probably won’t get more gross and nasty than that. Here PKJ, lemme help you, just send him to Buena Vista Street in Burbank and have him start smashing any cars that have Disney Parking Passes hanging from their rearview. That’ll get the Minions running outside and then you can have him smash through the gates and have him smash down to the 13^th circle of Hell which lies underneath their main building. Do you know what the 13^th circle is? Look it up. Hulk would do wonders down there.

 

So how long do I have to wait now until this new Mega Yuck Monsters Event is over? A year? Another year for another Hulk reboot? Longer? I have a bunch of missing old school Hulk issues in the 110-130 range that I need to get to finish my collection, maybe I’ll just save up for them instead. Lots of comic geeks seem to have loved this issue. I can only say that makes me really sad that something like this is resonating with so many.

 

I reject the entire notion of the entertainment industry where it feels that if it makes something dark, gory, gritty, violent and ugly that it's somehow more realistic and edgy. That can work for some art, some projects, sure, but for the most part it's just  depravity for depravity's sake. We have become horrified by our world and broken down over and over by the horrors that we are slowly uncovering in our world. One could say that this book is a reflection of that; fair enough.  Yet ultimately this is a 'Hero Book', or anti-hero if you will. There is nothing heroic about the essence of this tale or the proclamation of our anti-hero of conquering the body of it's host to just destroy whatever comes into its path. The Hulk used to smash because of his desire to be left alone. He was provoked. He warned you. Then it was game on.

I saw a video recently of a guy who was talking about his son finally standing up to a bully. He said that he told his son that it is noble to defend oneself. His son took out the bully but as the bully's head was about to hit the ground he reached down and held his head back from cracking on the pavement. That is a hero. That kid deserves a cape. Somehow I feel this Hulk would just smash that bully into the ground - and then watch as the corpse of a lamb burst out of his chest.

I wanted this to be great. I wanted to buy a monthly Green Goliath book.

 

But this comic just made me really really angry.

 

And you wouldn’t it like it when I’m angry –

 

About the Hulk.

RATING: 2.2

VERDICT: Drop. Burn. Do not feed to an Animal.

June '23 Reading Round Up

 

As my pull list dwindles to close to single digits due to what seems to be an inordinate amount of mind boggling unreadable drivel being offered by the Big 2, I find myself cherishing the few comics that do bring me joy on a monthly basis (or whenever the hell they get one out basis, looking at you Saga).

I've written about how after finishing 'Avengers: War Across Time' that I now yearn for a return to the books of old when plots of books with heroes in tights and shiny metal get-ups were simpler and the execution was flawless. Will Marvisney or DC issue a complete facsimile run of their greatest titles of the 60s and 70s? Highly unlikely, but ya never know. There's still great stuff out there geekazoids! You just have to dig a little harder and assume that you're gonna pick up a bunch of duds in the process; unfortunately the duds may cost close to 10 bux.

Are you reading Love Everlasting? Why not? You like comic books right? Tom King’s brilliant second arc is turning this series into what might be his masterpiece; it’s that good. I did see that he was taking over Wonder Woman. Unfortunately, all his DC Superhero stuff has been really disappointing. I haven’t read Double Dubs in forever. Last time I did was during Azzarello’s and Chiang’s unbelievable genius run. When was that like 12 years ago? Based on this title I might give King a pass for his past and see if he can transfer the glory of this book over to the invisible jet babe.

 

After Bendis’ walloped a homerun with last year’s ‘Pearl’ I’m on board with anything that has his name on it, at least until I’m not. I didn’t know this Murder Inc. was a thing and had dropped a bunch of story stuff several years ago. As far as I can tell the Mob runs most of the US and two immensely attractive Mob tools are summoned to the Vatican by the Pope who looks like Da Brat during the 90s. Sure, why the hell not?

 

 

 

 

I've said this before but it bears repeating, we should all be thankful that we were alive when Saga was releasing single issues. What a treat it is. Saga is more than a comic it's a cultural event. What other comic in history brings so many disparate personalities under one roof that is a letters column. I mean hell, somebody proposed to his girlfriend in a letter in one recent issue and in the latest issue she wrote in and said that she said yes. [In my gruff movie preview voice] In a world where comics suck ballz and eat away at your debit card. Where heroes are written by suckas and ten dollar books hook you in and then get deez nutz all the live long day one comic said, yeah fuck that, one comic rose above the dreck and brought the ruckus to all you Big 2 Mofackus. Not Chana Sag. Not Saggy Aftra. Saga. Sahhhhguhhhhhh.

 

Here's what else I got into this month:

Star Signs #1 - 5.0

 

White Knight: Generation Joker #1 - 6.7 

Avengers: War Across Time #5 - 9.0

 

Clear #3 & The Scott Snyder/Giancarlo Stanton Parallel 

Arcade Kings #1 - 7.1

That's it people, Happy 4th! I will be living through a veritable war zone in LA as people literally plaster the skies for hours with explosives. Anybody have any doggie earmuffs send 'em my way!

ARCADE KINGS #1 - Review

 

The best part of growing up and going to middle school in Northern New Jersey was the pizza, the parks, the proximity to Manhattan and…the arcades. When you’re a teeny tweenie and you don’t have to worry about making it to Hebrew School right after school there was nothing better than rushing to the arcade with a pocket full of quarters or a five spot ready to be turned into a mound of quarters with plenty of time to kill. 

 

There were two arcades on South Orange Avenue right up the street from the middle school. One was in a bike shop called Motorsport where the cool older kids went who cared about yucky girls and lighting up blah blah blah. The one where all the dorks, nerds and weirdos went was called South Orange Amusements (dorkaroonski loserville right?). It was bigger, had better games and nobody cared who you were or what you looked like, as long as you had button mashing and joystick skills you belonged. You would head there with your friends and then split up to your preferred game once you entered its hallowed linoleum tiled palace. The only reason you would run into each other again is if you quickly crapped out of your quarters and then had to harangue your homie while they played their pixelated addiction of choice. 

 

This arcade had everything you could ask for: Pinball, old school, new school you name it. It even had Dragon’s Lair, the holiest of holy video games which looked unbelievably cool but cost double the price of a regular game and was insanely hard to boot. Have you ever played the original version of Dragon’s Lair? It’s bonkers and the only kids that were kicking ass at the game had Richie Rich stacks of quarters next to the machine since you died every 15 seconds. Of course watching the cool kid who would actually own and beat the game was a sight to behold. 

 

My video game of choice was Popeye. Yes Popeye! It was amazing! I think it spoke to the soon to be romantic at heart in my prebuscent peach fuzz mustachioed body. The game was a pretty basic platform game. You had to catch hearts that Olive Oyl was tossing down to you from the top of the screen while Bluto chased after you. If things got close or screwy you could eat a can of spinach and get the strength to wallop Bluto which would send him careening across the screen while you snatched up hearts galore.

 

One of the great crowning achievements of my youth is not me reading from the dusty Torah scroll with no English to help me during my Bar Mitzvah, not walloping a homer in kickball after being picked last for the umpteenth time, not winning my class Spelling Bee BUT beating the high score in Popeye which garnered me a free South Orange Amusements T-Shirt. Boyeee! 

 

 

Anyway, all these memories came back to me when I saw the solicits for Arcade Kings come out. I legitimately became excited to read this book. I assumed it would bring back all the feels from the 80s arcades and take you right back to the time when life was simple when your jean pockets had three dollars worth of quarters; finally got around to reading it and boy was I wrong. I really have no idea what I just read. I can’t even categorize it. Maybe a mish mosh? An eye splattering colossal WTF? I mean, it felt like some cheesy 80s type cartoon. Actually it felt like a modern Cartoon Network show that was trying to vibe like an 80s cartoon. It was bright with bold colors and over the top emotional moments, but it did nothing for me; it felt a bit hollow as if Burnett was caught up more in the 'isn't this cool that we're doing this' rather than investing us in the world and its characters.

 

 

Make no mistake the art by Burnett was fantastic but it felt more like it should be hanging in an art gallery than it did sitting in my lap in a sequential art book that desperately needed a compelling story. From what I got, McMax, some legendary Fighter has a son named Joe who now roams around with a wonky Dragon Fruit Helmet on helping kids in arcades beat bullies who dare to challenge them. At some point some hyper toddler with a controller that controls an enormous robot challenges Joe to a Robot fight and mayhem ensues. We later find out that Joe has a brother and that his aging and now sickly Dad is actually McMax and he wants him home for what appears to be ill-intentioned reasons. 

 

Mnyeh. 

 

 

I guess I was expecting more arcade shenanigans and Karate Kid type drama rather than a family on the rocks with a now psycho dad drama. Hey, it's not awful by any means but for $8 you gotsta come wit da ruffneck bidness Burnett! The story flew bye with oversized panels and the glorified artistic style. Right now I'm looking at a book that has Joust/Dig Dug/Galaga potential. You're gonna need to ratchet this up to a Dragon's Lair/TMNT 4 Players-At-Once level or I'm dropping this faster than quarters from my Wrangler jeans went into Popeye at 3:22pm on a Tuesday.

Rating: 7.1

Verdict: A couple more quarters left before I'm out

CLEAR #3 - Review (The Giancarlo Stanton Parallel)

 

 

I’ve figured out something about Scott Snyder: He’s Giancarlo Stanton of the New York Yankees. Well, not exactly Giancarlo, he’s not created from his DNA or vice versa. No, Scott Snyder is the Giancarlo Stanton of the Comic Book industry. I mean, it’s a perfect match if you look at it.

 

Snyder burst onto the scene in 2010 at the same time that Stanton was a rookie. Snyder’s hit smash ‘American Vampire’ garnered him a bunch of awards, a Homerun if you will, while Stanton’s first two seasons solidified him as a titanic bat in the Marlins lineup.

 

In 2012 Snyder’s ‘Court of Owls’ Batman run was in full swing as was Stanton’s swing. Court of Owls, in my opinion, will go down as one of the greatest Batman storylines every written by anyone in the history of the character; yes it was that good and solidified Snyder as a veritable star. Stanton on the other hand, notched his first All Star appearance in 2012 and in 2014 came in second in the NL MVP vote to Clayton Kershaw, a Pitcher. I’m of the mind that pitchers already have an MVP award, it’s called the Cy Young – but whatever. Also, in 2014, Snyder put out ‘Wytches’ another monster hit that to this day is the best Horror comic I’ve ever read. News has it that Amazon Prime is making Wytches into an animated series, huh? Deep exhale.

 

In 2017 Snyder created the 'Dark Knights: Metal' mega oogah boogah crossover crossdressing event that probably involved every book in the DC Universe and probably somehow found its way into some Walking Dead comics over at Image as well. Snyder was: The Man. In 2017 Stanton crushed a whopping 59 homeruns and received his overdue MVP trophy. You might say that for both of these dudes, 2017 was the peak of their superpowers.

 

 

In 2018 and beyond Snyder kept writing more Batman Metal books that cost a whole lot due to the heroic duo of Snyder and Capullo creating it along with the fancy shmancy metallic glossy covers that all the books had. I don’t know about you but the entire ‘Metal’ run was, mnyeh. Nothing to write home or online about. I could just see DC Suits standing all over Snyder at his laptop as he wrote the series telling him to keep putting in obscure DC Character after obscure DC Character because DC is obsessed with bringing back moronic loser characters from the 60s that should stay in the 60s. I’m looking at you Mr. Mxyzptlk and Martian Manhunter!

 

In 2018 Stanton was traded along with his ginormous contract to the greatest sports organization in the history of the planet: The New. York. Yankees. Boyeeee. He had a really good first year and then injuries ruined the next two years with the team. I would say the Snyder ‘Metal’ run also injured my brain, my wallet and my view of Snyder as one of the best to ever do it.

 

In 2021, Stanton came back and, well, he had a really solid season but it was by no means earth shattering and it definitely wasn't a 30 million bucks a season good. In 2021 Synder signs an 8 Title contract with Comixology Originals. He’s three titles in and so far the books have been middling at best. ‘We Have Demons’ was a cool concept but it was an absolute mess of a plot and just devolved into gore and run of the mill ‘I love you and miss you daddy’ sniffly stuff.

 

‘Night of the Ghoul’ was also a huge disappointment. I broke that down here and then I made a case as to how Snyder was actually writing about how he refused to be initiated into the elite during an occult ritual under the Getty Center; that's here. Apparently it’s now in development as a feature film over at 20^th Century. Shouldn’t 20^th Century have changed it’s name to 21^st century by now? So now we have ‘Clear’ which actually homered in its first issue but grounded into a double play to end the second issue. As I’ve stated before with these three issue drops it’s almost impossible not to pick up the third issue if you’ve already picked up the first two; you feel silly. As has been the case with the first two titles, the debut issues were good enough and intriguing to motivate you to get the second issue which tanked in both instances. So what, you’re just gonna stop reading? Don’t you wanna see how the story ends? Sigh. I mean, not really. It’s just five bucks, then you’ll have all of the issues. Sigh, fine, it’s Scott Snyder, right?

 

See what I did there? I went for issue 3 of a series simply based off rep alone. That’s what’s going on with Stanton right now. He’s all rep no production. But you still will watch him when he’s at the plate because, jeez, look how big he is, look at those swings, if he gets a hold of one he could hit it to Myanmar! But he won’t. He’ll strike out in big spots with the game on the line and you’ll curse his name but next week he’ll be up in the 9^th in a tied game with the crowd roaring and you’ll get your hopes up all over again. Snyder's series have become Stanton in the 9th with 2 out and runners in scoring position down one - you wince, pray and assume the worst.

 

That’s what I did with this final issue of ‘Clear’, got my hopes up and, well, it actually came out alright! I’m going to spoil one of the plot points here so if you’re planning on reading it you might wanna scroll down. First, I think that entire subject matter surrounding augmented realities and the need/addiction for humanity these days to perceive something other than what their life or the truth is through the lens of an altered perception is ripe for all sorts of creative projects. I’m deeply interested in this as a whole. In this book we get ‘veils’ which provides the user with their own filter to see the world with.

 

Something that Snyder incorporates into this futuristic world are WRKS, robots that perform all the menial tasks of this futuristic reality. Well, turns out the robots aren't robots after all. Once you take away all the veils and filters and actually see reality for what it is you'll find out that the WRKS aren't robots at all but naked muted people...with scowls on their faces. There's something about them working off their debt or being promised a nice place in Alaska or something. I hate to say it but I wasn't thrown off or disgusted by this plot twist. 

 

See, I live in Los Angeles we have actual WRKS here right now. They're called valets, baristas, Uber drivers, Whole Foods counter people. They're not naked (which is a good thing) and they do smile but they're generally treated like robots and their big promise or dangling carrot is the hope that one day they'll be bonked into the water on the newest season of 'Wipeout'. I think all politicians should be forced to be a contestant on 'Wipeout' before being allowed to hold office and if their approval rating dips below 40 they have to go on the show again slathered in coconut oil. Anyway, the ending was definitely solid, nothing to complain about. There was a nice little diatribe about how if regular folks were shown the truth they still would deny it and want to rush back to their veils, spot on that.

 

Look, this wasn’t a Homerun that’s for sure. I'd say it was a ground rule double, a deep shot to left that bounced fair and into the stands. Despite all of the misery and disappointment I'll keep rooting for Stanton and buying Snyder books because there's got to be some thunderous moonshots left in both of them. Synder's got another 3 issue series dropping soon called 'Barnstormers: a Ballad about Love and Murder'. Fuck. I'm all over that. Dammit. Well, I think my entire Stanton Parralel was spot on, I mean, look what I just found.

 

 

That's Snyder and his kids at last night's Yankee game. I swear I had no idea he was a Yankee fan until I googled the name of the Barnstormers comic which I had forgotten. Dammit Scott, you're amazing, just, I dunno...crack one out of the park for me like old times would ya? Oh and crack Zdarsky on the head and take over Batman again, mmkay? Thanks.

 

Rating: 8.7

Verdict: Cuz it's 1, 2, 3 issues for Snyder in the Ol' Comic Gaaaaaaame.

AVENGERS WAR ACROSS TIME #5 - Review & Facsimile Request

 

Fun Fun Fun, that’s what ‘Avengers: War Across Time’ was. At some point the Big 2, DC & Marvel, lost the element of fun in their books. Everything became sooo serious or so commodified as they had to tie into something other than the book itself, a movie, a game, another book etc. I would say a bunch of DC Black Label books last year nailed the fun factor, especially Catwoman: Lonely City. My goodness that series was amazing. I’m not sure what’s going on with Black Label this year, seems like the spigot got twisted off and the steady stream of inventive forward thinking fun books got shelved for other mnyeh take it or leave it stuff.

 

Paul Levitz and Co. truly captured the essence of fun that made Marvel books so great in this limited series. It felt like you had snagged a tattered comic that had a price tag of 12 cents in the upper right hand corner from a musty comic shop located in a closet in Brooklyn. The characters were bright technicolor over the top heroic heroes with corny one liners and a knack for being able to say ‘stick together’ and ‘let’s get him’ in a myriad of different ways. There was a ridiculous myopic power hungry intergalactic villain in a shiny purplish metallic outfit snorting up universes and worlds like a maniacal coke addict from the 80s. What more could you ask for? Crumbling buildings. Streets collapsing into underground kingdoms populated by Lava Men. Laws of Physics, Time & Space suspended completely with an utter disregard for consequences of future issues and future storylines; the stakes were high AF. 

 

Why was this approach abandoned completely? It seems like hero comics of the past few decades have been wired to find ways to prove to us that these heroes are actually real and exist in our world rather than allowing us to find ways to escape into theirs for a brief moment. I bet some Marketing Schmuck wandered into DC & Marvel’s offices in the 2000s and gave them the ‘relatable’ PowerPoint presentation. You know the one where suits and creatives are convinced that entertainment has to exist in a way where the audience has to relate to everything that’s going on with what you’re doing.

 

So, the Hulk needs therapy, Iron Man needs AA, Cap needs an enema, Batman needs a reiki massage, Supes needs a hug from Daddy blah blah blah. Just reading this series, I mean, the way the world is these days I don’t want my heroes dealing with modern day nonsense, just beat some wack job with a time machine up and kiss a babe at the end for goodness sake. A book like this is something you look forward to, you know you can just sit back and relax into the world because of the very fact that it’s not yours. I will say that the ending did seem a bit rushed though as the Avengers, who were sent through a time portal by a shaken Kang looking for a pause in their battle on his world, saw future iterations of themselves only to end up back in 60s New York. Feels like Levitz had more story to tell but I’m guessing the cell in the dungeon he was being kept in under Disney Land needed to be cleared out for some new Pop Star so they needed him to wrap up the comic.

 

I have an idea for Marvisney. I just read Iron Man #1 (1968) one of the facsimile issues they just put out; it was stupendous. Fun Fun Fun. Look, Marvisney, your current books are mostly poop and cogs in your machine; fine, you do you. Instead of just randomly popping out facsimile issues here and there why don’t you release facsimile issue RUNS of all your great books: Spiderman, Fantastic Four, Avengers, Iron Man etc. How fun would that be? As fans, we’d get to read the comic books in sequence as if we were living when these spectacular titles were released for the first time. Release these facsimiles monthly. Reprint the first 100 issues of each. Maybe find a way to make the art feel not so overly bright and matted; gussy up the quality a bit. Make a big deal of it, charge I dunno, $5 a book, maybe add some extras in the back like original art or whatever. You telling me these things wouldn’t sell out faster than a CabbagePatch Kid in 1983?

 

Guys, you don’t have to do anything other than reprint, publish and ship and - boom, another revenue stream. Yes, I understand that all these comics have been reprinted in compendiums and addendums and oversized oogly boogly fancy tomes that get gifted to comic geeks over the holidays. But this is different. This is giving retro fans the feel of actually reading the original books as if they were being printed for the first time. Release 3 or 4 main titles, 100 issues each. What’s that? Two grand for 100 issues of each of them from each comic geek? That not good enough for you? Hell, DC, why don’t you join the fun, do it for Detective Comics and Action Comics. Why. Wouldn’t. You???

 

I’ll tell you why. I think I read a reason for why this hasn’t and won’t happen, because the Big 2 don’t want the competition from their own brand. In other words, if these reprints outsell their current titles then it makes their current titles look really really bad. I get it. That’s a bad look. But here’s the deal, maybe, just maybe that would be a sign for your current books to change course and incorporate some of the old into the new as they move forward into future stories. I mean c'mon, most of what the entertainment industry does these days is recycle the same stuff over and over or pop out sequels, how is this any different?

 

I dunno, seems like a slam dunk to me. AND. Make it so those coupons and ads in the back of the comics are real! C’mon. I never had the pennies and bucks when I was a kid but I am dying to send away for some Sea Monkeys, a book from Charles Atlas on how to get muscles, and 10,000 plastic army men in a bag.  

 

I also might be up for a paperboy route. I've always wanted to chase after John Cusack and wail 'TWO DOLLARS'!

Rating: 9.0

Verdict: Pull

BATMAN, WHITE KNIGHT: GENERATION JOKER #1 - Review

 

We’re back in Spinoff-ville with the White Knight multi-quasi-verse. It was thought that the last issue of ‘Murphy the Great’s’ White Knight run was the last of its kind until we found out in the final pages that it was not. Clearly DC freaked the fuck out realizing that their best Bat Title of the past several years was about to go bye bye so they doubled down and now we’ve got Murph working on White Knighting Double Dubs and the JLA while his pudgy mop topped apprentice and his wife babe drop this ‘Joker’s Kids’ series.

 

Admittedly I was bit nonplussed about the shift to keep going. Emotionally I was geared up for a final/this is it issue of what has been a stellar game changing run of an Alt-Bat-Uni only to find out – it’s not. It was kind of like what happens at the end of summer camp when you’re a kid. You’re saying goodbye to everyone, you’re crying and hugging people you never hugged. Confessions are made, smiles are received from kids who never talked to you or about you except when they were plotting to wrap you up in toilet paper and hang you from the entrance to the swimming pool. So imagine instead of waiting for everyone’s parents to show up to take them back to their regular lives the Camp Counselors went ‘Psyche! We’re going to stay here through September! You don’t have to say goodbye!’ Umm, awkward. I just cried on the shoulder of my D&D pal, not sure I can look him in the eye and roll a twenty sided die around him again.

 

I’m not trying to be a complete dick here but I’m completely bummed that this Clay McShmookle dude is back writing anything at all in this Universe. His White Knight Red Hood two issue thingy was a complete and utter disaster as I detailed here. I just get the vibe that his uncle or dad is a bigwig and knows someone high up in the DC power structure who got this shmo jobs; standard Hollywood stuff, whatever, but if you’re gonna hype up a new return then I dunno, keep McShmookle on a backstory or something. Here’s a question, why wasn’t Murphy’s wife Katana Collins just given full rein to write this book instead of having to work with Kid Nepotism? I’d be psyched about that! Murph lolling in bed with his girl throwing out Joker Kid ideas, sign me up. I did a little digging on Katana Collins, turns out she writes steamy hot BDSM novels. Here’s a vid of the Comic Book Deity himself reading one of her tomes:

 

 

Dude. Umm. In my Paris Hilton voice ‘That’s hawwt’. Why isn’t Katana writing that way for this book or any White Knight book? It’s Black Label right? Put her on a White Knight Cat-Chick book where she and Harley have to find a doofus named Clay, hang him naked upside down and paddle his bum until he commits to the writing program at UCLA.

 

This issue felt like a ‘Batman The Animated Series’ story or almost a Batman ’66 story. It had this level of camp and schmaltz that Murphy’s books did not. I get it, the Joker Kids get to know their Dad as he takes them through the places and memories of his past; decent enough premise. What we end up getting is standard old school 1940s Batman stuff where a villain has somehow funded an entire sting operation in multiple locales to torment the Bat; except here it’s the holographic Joker and his actual offspring. I won’t spoil who it is but it’s a kid of one of the villains that the Joker killed in this Bat Universe.

 

This kid of this villain not only was able to find out or predict the behavior of an encrypted AI belonging to a multi-billionaire but was also able to rent out this ‘Pop Up Revenge Warehouse Area’ for what? A month? In New York/Gotham? The production values are pretty high, there’s all kinds of cues and triggers that Jokey and the Kids go through, wouldn’t there be a stage Manager or several Villain PAs with headsets on milling about behind the scenes? Of course there would be, but there isn’t, because, you know, cheesy Batman 66 type stuff.

 

I would also like to submit my gripe on Batman not being available for this series because he’s busy working on a FBI gig so he could clear a debt that he has with them. Really? You think Bats would ever do an FBI gig? No frikkin’ way! Like, what are they going to have him do? Help run a color revolution/overthrow a duly elected government in the Middle East so we can get all of their oil and precious minerals. Help capture and eventually render useless alternative health practitioners that keep finding cheap natural cures to cancer? Produce half of Hollywood’s movies for a year or two? Also, what's with casting Elektra as the FBI Liaison chick? Has there ever been an FBI agent this drop dead gorgeous? Aren't we in 'Get my hot Latina client on Law & Order SVU or you're not coming to Pentagrams & Red Robe Tuesdays anymore' land?

 

Mirka’s visuals for the book are actually pretty good considering she’s used to doing anthropomorphic piggie and wolfie porn. I think what she might want to consider is her linework when it comes to character’s eyes; they’re all huge. It has this Anime/Manga feel to it rather than the skulking gritty noirish vibe that White Knight is accustomed to. Clearly Clay creamed his pants when he found out that ‘Ms. Piggy’s Got a Wet Poon Blanket’ was going to do the art on this book. You know he’s one of those pervs that has those $500 Anime statues of half naked chicks in skimpy outfits all over his apartment. Like one of these things.

 

 

I dunno man. Six issues of this? Six. Yeesh. I dunno if I can stick around for six of issues of Clay and pseudo Murphy land. I mean, my pull is really low these days and I’ve got every single White Knight issue that’s ever been popped out. Ughh. Six issues. I wish it was a tight 3 like Scott Snyder likes to do. I could definitely do 3. But 6? It’s like going on a mediocre date with the sister of a babe that you really really like. The babe’s name is Alejandra, oof, drool. The sister’s name is Malin or something with Mal in it like Malia or Mallory. I mean, Mallory, she’s cute, but she’s got this pigpen cloud around her. She shuffles along and bites her nails, doesn’t like to laugh. Alejandra? Alejandra shorts out your circuits. She’s the kind of woman you shower extra long for where you actually scrub your entire body down rather than just the Big 3 (crotch, pits, butt). So this series is Malin. You’re telling me I have to date Malin for 6 months until I get a shot at Alejandra again? Oof. Rough. I’ll go on a hike with her for our second date and hmm, farmer’s market thingy for our third date but if I start making whiny Jew noises after our third date I’m cutting her off. 

 

Maybe I just need to get Katana's naughty BDSM novel and read it after I finish each issue in this series but that could lead to a ridiculous habit of reading erotica with my morning coffee. Next thing you know I'll be buying $500 Sexy Batgirl statues at 10am every other day.

Rating: 6.7

Verdict: Pull