VOID RIVALS #1 - Review

 

Hell yes I’m down to check out a new Sci-Fi series penned by Captain Kirkman and drawn by Lorenzo DeFelici who just recently dropped Kroma, a truly enjoyable 4 issue mini-series that was easy on the eyes, sign me up! The premise is quite simple: A dude and chick who are enemies from warring planets crash their spaceships on a random barren planetoid and they’re forced to work with each other to find a way off; definitely not recreating the plot wheel here but whatever. I suppose I should brace myself for some tried and true trope of ‘Gosh, we’re really all the same if we just look beyond the labels’; eye roll.

 

First things first, it looks like they ripped the design of the helmets of these pilots from a couple popular DC characters: Cat Woman and, umm, I don’t read this book at all but the robot guy thingy dude from Doom Patrol. Look –

 

 

 

 

I'm right aren't I?
 

 

So we get the basic set-up of yeah yeah they hate each other and oh no, our ships don’t work what are we going to do? The marooned duo then go gallivanting around this barren rock looking for anything they can find and they come upon an ancient looking spaceship that seems to have been abandoned. Oh man, this is going to be so cool. Go Kirk go! After some tinkering the ship comes to life and turns into a robot and flies off. Hmm, weird, that looked like a Transformer, wonder why they put a Transformer in this comic. Oh well, wait, hold on here, flipping pages, flipping pages, reading the letter from Kirky at the end.

 

Wait, what? No way. Seriously??? This is a Transformers/G.I. Joe tie in? Are you fucking kidding me? You’re kidding me, right? Tell me you did not just rope me in under the guise of offering a brand new Sci-Fi series and then bait and switch me to make it about a cross-promotion with Hasbro and their IP and product line? Is this Image? Did Kirkman get abducted by Klaus Schwab since he didn’t fall in line with his W.E.F. diabolical plans and is now finding a way to completely ruin his credibility and his brand? Is Dylan Mulvaney a ghost writer on this project? How was this cross-promotion not mentioned at all in any of the solicits or early reviews? People! C’mon! This is shockingly awful. Did Lorenzo and his breathtaking artistic talents know what he was getting into? Was he just as taken aback by this as I am?

 

 

Lorenzo: Hey, so, umm, what’s this Transformers thing that happens at the end of the script?

 

Kirky: Isn’t it cool? Welcome to the Energon Universe! Endless possibilities.

 

Lorenzo: Yeah, um, but I thought this was a –

 

Kirky: You will never believe who makes a cameo in the second issue?

 

Lorenzo: Umm, uh, wait, Energon Univ –

 

Kirky: G.I. Joe! Amazeballs right?!?! We got you in on a winner here.

 

Lorenzo: You mean the Army Toy Guy? Wait, is this a –

 

Kirky: I’m actually here with Hasbro’s marketing team right now, say hi Lorenzo!

 

Lorenzo: You’re where? Wait, did you say G.I. Joe? In a Sci-Fi comic?

 

Kirky: Hey, you don’t seem thrilled, keep it down pal, it’s all in that Kroma contract you signed. You’ll draw the fucking toys and you’ll draw them well or I’ll ruin you.

 

 

I’m absolutely blindsided by this incredulous Hasbro cross promotion by Image. Dude, this is some Free Comic Book Day shit. This is some IDW (I Don’t Want) toy comic stuff. Dude, this is some Garage Sale 25 cents a book in a cardboard box stuff. Like, put your ads in the solicits or put a a graphic on the cover and tell comic geeks this is what you plan on doing. In my Mad Dog voice “You CANNOT tell me you’re writing a Sci Fi Book and then tell me you’re selling me toys and comics about toys!!! Can’t do it!”. You can’t say, “Oh this was our big surprise”. It’s not a fucking surprise! If a new Batman series launched and at the end he stumbled into a life sized Monopoly board and you told your readers:

 

‘Welcome to Bat-Opoly! Each month Batman will travel around the board. Which property will he land on next??? The Joker’s Boardwalk? Will the Riddler’s Chance Cards drive him batty? Will Harley Quinn’s Community Chest bonk him on the head? Or is it actually Harley Quinn’s Produgious Chest for the Community? You can’t pass Go and we will collect your $4.99 ($84.99 for the acetate blank cover).’

 

This would be like if at the end of the premiere issue of ‘The Walking Dead’ Rick reached into his satchel and pulled out a Nerf Gun that he shot at a bunch of Zombies. ‘Hey hope you enjoyed this wild zombie ride! We’ve partnered with Hasbro and each month we’ll showcase one of their classic toys and games set against the backdrop of a brutal gruesome zombie apocalypse. Next month Clue! It was a biter in the RV with a blown off head on a stick, Fun Fun Fun!’

 

This comic should be in the kiddie section of my comic book shop. There’s a kiddy section with all ages Batman books and Animaniacs, Mickey and Donald stuff; put it there. This like a comic your mom would bring home for you from Walgreens or CVS where they had licensed comics that weren’t real comics but, I dunno, like the Hulk used a moisturizing cream on his knees or it’d be an anti-drug comic sponsored DARE or something. You’d go, thanks Mom, and then it would collect dust in your attic.

 

Transformers/G.I. Joe on a barren planet with two marooned losers who hate each other, blecch. What’s next? Does Mr. Potato Head fly in on a ship but the ship falls apart and his eyes fall out and create craters on the planet? Do they stumble upon a life size Ouija board and attempt to contact Space Ghost to give them assistance? Do they fall into a cave where they discover Play-Doh and try to build a ship from it? Does a fleet of My Little Ponies attack them with space grenades that look like Furbys???

 

 

I’m flabbergasted, what a complete utter waste of four bucks. What a gut punch from the King of Image. Are you that hard up for cash? Start a kiddie line and be excruciatingly clear that you’re starting a kiddie line and leave us grown Comic Geeks alone. You’re still the greatest Comic Book publisher on Earth but, oy vey, stick this comic in an Easy-Bake oven, ding! It’s done.

 

Rating: 1.0

Verdict: Drop

MIRACLEMAN: THE SILVER AGE #5 - Review

 

"In case of Reading a Bunch of Crappy Comic Books: Break Glass”. That’s what should read on the outside of a case that houses this MiracleMan comic but no glass case exists. I’ve had this issue facing out at the top of my comic book rack for a while for just said occasion. Like a true miraculous deified Hero it was waiting for the moment when it was needed most, when the comic offerings sitting underneath it or behind it proved to be so unbearably maddening that I needed the guarantee of its Gaiman Glory.

 

The completion of Miracleman, one of the greatest stories in the history of comics and modern literature, yes I said it, eff Harry Pooper, got off to a rocky start at best. I was crestfallen, ooh I love when I get to use that word properly, yes I was crestfallen. There was such a great anticipation for this book and then it was smeared with a cheap questionably pedo smooch that came out of nowhere. Thankfully, Gaiman switched gears and got things back on track last issue and reminded us why he’s a titan of the industry.

 

So needless to say I was psyched to peel this open until it hit me that, wait, this is Marvisney, this is what they do. They get you excited then ball up their fist in a Mickey Mouse glove and thwack you in your nizzuts. Everything they touch lately has turned to poop. Was Gaiman invincible? Whose idea was this Dicky Dauntless Miracle smooch anyway? Gaiman’s? Igers? Satan? The real witches that the Hocus Pocus movies are based on who prepare the food in the Marvisney employee cafeteria? Oh fer goodness sake Marvisney, clench those cheeks and save your culture dung for something else!

 

Well, turns out this issue was fine, but, I mean, nothing really happened here. Purple Hair chick takes Dicky Dick on her flying cycle with her ex to London to go looking for the records of when he was a kid. Umm, that’s pretty much except for a final reveal/reaction by Dicky which I won’t spoil for you here. After that Neil pops in another retro comic stylized story like he did in the previous where Double M is gazing in a looking glass and watches this old timey story unfold. Admittedly, this back-up story was fantastic. He’s got every nuance and the vernacular of these comics from the Golden Age down to a tee. It feels like you’re reading one of those facsimile issues that they’ve been putting out recently (which I absolutely love). 

And then, well, that’s it. Feels like Neil forgot he was on a deadline with Marvisney and just cobbled this script together for the amazing talents that are Bellaire and Buckingham. Or maybe Neil’s taking the Mouse on! Maybe he was told to go one way with the story and this is him telling Beelzebub to take the piss. Oh, you want me to do all that? These are your notes? How about I drop an issue where nothing really happens, for shits and giggles. Whose stock dipped under 90? Mine or yours? Go Neil Go! I can see Marvisney suits in their office in a conference call to Neil in the UK just gushing over how amazing he is and how delighted they are with the direction that the book is going on. Of course once they hang up on him they all drop to their hind legs and start growling and gnashing their teeth “How are we going to extract his consciousness and hook it up to our AI Mainframe while we render his body lifeless so we can have our way with it every Halloween like we do with the rest of our writing staff?"

 

At any rate, it was a relatively quick read, an interlude/bridge for what’s to come, no major fireworks, no pedo smooches although Purple Hair Chick is probably on fire for the Dicky but so far she hasn’t ravished him…yet. Hmm, well, that just freed up a bunch of time since this comic was so succinct and inconsequential, I feel less than satisfied. I guess I can get myself to one of the actor picket lines. Let me see, when are they picketing Disney and where? Burbank, hmm. Wait, how hot is it out? 87??? That means 142 in Burbank in the shade. Let me check the traffic and see how long it’s taking to get from West Adams, which is near USC, to Burbank right now. Hmm, only 4 hours and 17 minutes, that’s not too bad. I wonder if I plaster the recent Hulk #1 on a picket sign do you think people will look at me funny? Probably. I do have my ‘Stream This’ sign which is a picture of pee going in a urinal. Hmm, yeah probably shouldn’t take that either, I can see being called transphobic over it. I mean, I can’t make the connection but I’m sure some unhinged actor who hasn’t booked a job since Clinton was in office will probably lose it on me.

 

Yeah, I think fearing for my life outweighs my need to yell epithets at Disney from their Gates of Hell. I’ll just do what I’ve been doing for the past several months during the Writer’s strike: I meditate and send good vibes to the writer. Next, after I’m done going ohmmm, I open up my Uber app and an ‘Uber Package’ to pick up a couple poopy bags filled with the excrement of my Little Princess and have them delivered it to one of the major streamers. I’ve been doing that for months. The Uber Drivers don’t care, they’re used to driving complete utter pieces of poop around LA so this is probably an upgrade for them, at least these pieces of poop don’t talk.

 

I mean, really, with gas prices so high and traffic worse than ever they need to set up Zoom Picket lines so we can just hop on a Zoom Strike Line when we have the time. I mean, do you think mega-billion dollar earning studios are quaking in their boots when they see dozens of out of work actors from the valley show up outside their gates? You wanna hit them hard? Hack their conference calls and insert a Zoom Strike Feed into their conference rooms. Central Casting needs to sic all of their extras on their favorite dining spots: Mr. Chow’s, Craig’s, Spartina, the altar for children underneath the Getty Center. If they’re threatening to keep this going to the point where actors lose their homes then we need to pull a Los Angeles 2023 and start erecting tents around their homes in the hills and in Bel Air. C’mon people! Think outside the box!

 

Anyway, this was okay, now I have to clean up the glass all around my comic book rack that I broke to get to this.

 

Rating: 7.5

Verdict: Pull 

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.