BARNSTORMERS #1 - Review

 

And I’m back for another three issue Scott Snyder Droperoonkski! I just can’t seem to stay away from his premises, they all look and sound great. The execution? Welllll...First there was ‘The Night of the Ghoul’ which I reviewed. It started out with a solid bang and then petered off into complete nonsensical swill on a page. This was my take on the 3rd issue Ghoul #3 which only made sense as an allegorical reveal of how Snyder escaped the clutches of the Big 2. Then there was ‘Clear’ which also started off with a bang bang for the first issue. The second issue was a nice helping of poo but the final issue came with that boom bap and brought it on home for the equivalent of an enjoyable satisfying handy as I finished it in my La-Z-Boy. I reviewed that here and came to the conclusion that Snyder's career paralleled Yankee slugger Giancarlo Stanton's

 

So to recap: That’s 1 of 3 solid issues for Ghoul and 2 of 3 solid issues for Clear. Can we, for all that is good and holy in the comic book universe, puhhhleeaaaaze get 3 solid issues here Synder? I’m optimistic. Maybe Dark Horse took a look at all these offerings of these Synder Triplets and released them in order of wack to bad ass which would mean that ‘Barnstormers’ was about to bring some serious sequential art ruckus for all us geeky comicfockas. You’ve got a romance book with a babe in a plane set in the roaring 20s drawn by Hip Hop Hooray Ho Tula Lotay Yo and this has the makings of a B52 Book Bombah.

 

Speaking of Dark Horse, has anyone noticed that they’ve been bumped from the major publisher sections of Previews World and relegated to all the Indie Books? They used to get their own section where all of their solicits were in one place. Now they’re just part of the soup that includes the likes of ‘Scout’ and ‘Artists and Writers’ and the questionably pornerific manga anime titles from ‘Oni Press’. It’s like they’re the AFC Richmond Greyhounds who just got booted from the Premier League. It’s like they’ve been sent down to the minors. It’s like they’ve shown up to the cool Comic Book After Party in the Hills and were told to wait on line like the rest of the rabble while IDW and Boom suckas waltz right on in.

 

Hey, it’s a justified demotion. Dark Horse originals have been downright putrid as of late. Seems like once they got sold to Embracer, the Swedish Video Game Conglomerate, their titles and story lines got cheaper than an Ikea coffee table made from balsa wood and hope. Embracer basically bought it to make all their IPs into TV Shows and movies and what they’ve delivered so far has been outright bunk; I’m looking at you Umbrella Acada-blecchhh. The worst part of the whole deal was that the word ‘mine’ was used extensively in the press release. Embracer couldn’t wait to ‘mine’ their creations. Stick a finger in my comic geek throat and hurl. This is the epitome of why comic books have sucked so bad in recent memory, they’re not being written for comic books they’re being written for TV. They’re not story boards you assholes, they’re comic books. Anyway, Dark Horse was smart enough to snatch up the Comixology Snyder Triumvirate and release them under their imprint to at least reclaim some of the respectability that they once had.

 

As for Barnstormers, first things first, Tula Lotay’s art is simply gorgeous. Each page is an art gallery, a master class in sequential story telling. Buying up all three of these issues is worth it for her triumph alone. Does Snyder keep up? For the most part, yes. A woweee holy moly babe who’s the daughter of a farmer is forced to marry some douchebag so her dad’s farm won’t get taken over. When the struggling red baron air devil dude ruins her wedding to said douchebag she sees it as a sign and takes off with him to escape her fate.

 

How psyched would I be if this girl showed up outside of my gym and told me I had no choice but to ride into the wide blue yonder with her in my Camaro:

 

Of course, I’d have to ask to her pitch in for gas money. I mean, it’s close to 6 bux a gallon out here in Commiefornia. I’d probably just drive out to Woodland Hills and tell her we made it to Death Valley where nobody would ever dare to look for her. Then I’d take her out for dinner at the prepared foods section at Whole Foods, ya know, really splurge on her, give her my rendition of my fave Shakespearean monologue. We'd be making out on our walk past TGIFriday's in no time.

 

There’s a bunch of interesting plot devices, including the lead pilot having hallucinations or psychotic episodes of a motorized robot with glowing eyes following him. Overall, Snyder drops another solid well structured set-up issue and cliffhanger and has his audience hooked for more. That’s 3 for 3 in first issues of these comixology originals if you’re not counting. If you’re an upcoming comic book writer perhaps taking a look at the first issues of these Snyder three-issue drops will clue you in as to how to grab an audience.

 

The one gripe I have with the book is, well, the females use the word ‘Fuck’ a lot. Like, was that even a thing back then? I thought if you said ‘Goddamn’ it was like using the c-word back then. I feel like girls said stuff like ‘My Stars’ or ‘Tarnation’ or ‘Gee willikers’ or ‘Take a Hike, Bub’. In Barnstormers, not so much. When our pilot asks a sexy redhead operator to help promote his plane stunts in the next town she says:

 

You want to win me over? How about some fucking quiet?

 

That sounds like every girl I match with on the dating apps. They don’t want me sending me them an initial text, they want me to just say nothing for six months to a year, yeah that’s it. These girls are tired of all this message noise! Oy vey.

 

Anyway, I mean, I can see any redhead dropping f-bombs but for some chick from the 1920s, seems a little out of sorts. The lead runaway bride babe also drops f-bombs every other text bubble. Seems like Snyder is either trying to make this edgy or  Embracer sent Dark Horse a message saying they want their IPs to have more F-Bombs because their AI Content Algos are telling them the target 18-34 demo needs to see or hear F-Bombs every 28.7 words in a game or show.

 

Buy this fucking comic you fucking geeks, fuck!

 

Aaaand I just got an e-mail from Embracer, they like my fucking writing style, do I have any IPs? Well Swedish Comic Book Publisher Destroyer, I got this video game concept where a horny dater virtually enters the messaging part of the app and wanders around for the duration of the game fighting indifference and the void.

 

I call it  ___________________.                                 

 

Let the bidding begin.

 

Rating: 9.1

Verdict: Pull

ANTARCTICA #1 - Review

 

If you had asked me several years ago what I thought about the ‘Flat Earth’ theory I would have smirked and said ‘C’mon dude’ I’m not a wacko. I viewed the flat earth question as a trap. A way to avoid listening to everything else I was talking about in regards to how the world worked because if I thought the earth was flat then clearly nothing coming out of my mouth should be taken as fact. Fast forward five years later and…hmm. I’m not saying I agree with the theory but what I am saying is I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that we are in fact living on a flat earth.

The ‘flatties’ have made some compelling arguments over the past few years and have presented a lot of damning evidence that goes contrary to our rounded minds. I just saw a video on Chinagram where somebody approached the cockpit of a plane where the pilot was standing and asked him point blank ‘Hey you’ve flown around the world and back do you think the world is flat’ and without hesitation the pilot answered ‘I absolutely know the earth is flat’ and then asked the questioner ‘Wait, are you filming?’. Combine all the flatties theories with the fact, the fact, that NASA is a complete sinkhole for money and that they have been lying and fabricating all kinds of nonsense to the general public for years and I would give the percentage of us living on a game board to be about 70% bubble butt to 30% n’assatall (no ass at all). 

I say all this because a lot of the flatties always point to Antartica as the gatekeeper to the secrets of our world. A place where you can enter a hole at the top of the earth to descend into a middle earth if you will where a whole race of wild beings live. A race that is probably hostile because their coffee sucks and they can’t get Hulu to watch the first two seasons of ‘The Bear’. There’s also the notion that upon traipsing to Antarctica that you will encounter an ice wall and when you sail beyond it you will find the outer wall to our planet that encircles our game board. Add in the fact that you also see nut job politicians and world bureaucrats like Herman Munster aka John Kerry flying down there for God knows what and it’s obvious that something shady is happening down there. Here's a recent video of some guy who actually had access to everything down there. This is probably the tip of the literal iceberg:

Perhaps the all the editors of DC’s Black Label were abducted and sent down there after they put out too many amazing comics last year, can’t have the peasants enjoying themselves too much.

It was with this thought in mind, hey maybe this book is going to get into all of this nutty round or flat butt stuff, that I picked up this issue. I hoped and pined for something gritty and substantive. I imagine if Brian Wood hadn’t been black listed by the Comic Book industry this would be right up his alley and the series would be freakin’ fantastic but unfortunately he tried kissing too many girls in comic book office bathrooms or something and that makes him unfit to provide the general public with great content. Well, I just put down this book, reading these pages was like reading this naked from the waist down with an ice block placed under  my balls, which is something I am very much NOT into.  Yeesh. 

The creator of this book is some dude named Simon Birks, a wily Brit who’s got Indie vibe all over him. Either that or he's about to be cast in another 70s Musician Biopic as the hip Music Engineer who looks at the main character laying down vocals in the vocal booth and says 'Crikey, this bloke can sing!'. Can’t say if any of the 50 books he’s successfully funded on kickstarter or any of the books on his imprint Blue Fox are any good, haven’t read any of them. I will say that Image in their bio of him on his site mentioned none of them but rather included a blurb that Michael Palin once called one of his films ‘silly’. That could be either a negative or a positive given the delivery of that word. Now, if the inflection on the last syllable went up then that’s a good thing. Just hear that in your mind, silly with the tone rising at the end. However, if the inflection went down on the second syllable, hear that one, then it sounds pretty bad right? Maybe Palin wanted to say garbage but decided to be nice and say silly. Here’s Simon boring some Pixie Chick who looks like the Kryptonian villain Ursa in Superman II. Clearly she was hoping to get Chip Zdarsky instead of a roadie for Spinal Tap for her interview:

Anyway, there is one thing that stands out from this book. The lead character Hannah is by far the absolute hottest homeless chick in the history of the planet. She may in fact eclipse the one and only Halle Berry who played a homeless chick in the film ‘New Jack City’. I remember once doing a comedy show with a comedian who had a bit about that. He said ‘Man, y’all see Halle Berry as a homeless girl. I kept saying to myself, wow, why is this girl homeless, she could be Halle Berry’ lol!!! I mean look at this girl, you telling me a chick like this would ever be homeless? 

 

 

 

She looks like a trust fund baby who buys designer hipster clothes and then takes an Uber Black to a grungy Silverlake venue to listen to a messy band so she can appear cool. Like, she approachesthe bar and giddily says ‘I’ll have a sir-veysa beer’ which she’s practiced saying on her Uber Black ride over. C’mon Birks!

Halle Berry is offered by a Hozier looking Coffee Shop Manager to use his shop’s bathroom to clean up. Maybe instead of offering his bathroom he could have called the local modeling agency and said ‘Hey I think one of your girls is sleeping on the street’. Hozier then tells Halle that if she goes to a trade show and learns a skill for a job that he’ll let her sleep in his shop. OR he could, I dunno, ask her out instead and, I dunno, be dating Halle Berry. Look, since all the diversity stuff here in Hollywood, Blonde Actresses are littered all over the city. There’s no use for them anymore. They take up about 20% of the homeless population out here. They just sit on the street, live streaming from their tents which are covered in their headshots. The local shelters have accommodated them with free plant based meals and recycled yoga mats, it’s been really a group effort to keep the Blondes surviving in town. You might ask, well Issac, why not ask out one of the Blonde homeless actress chicks out if they're so hot? Hmmmm? Because I'd be considered a White Supremacist and Racist, duh. I'm not falling for that trap, c'mon.

So Halle goes to this trade show, is disinterested in all the possible jobs except the one where she can learn how to be a mechanic. Now, here’s where Birks-enstock loses all credibility as a writer. Halle learns how to become a mechanic and then, get this, gets offered a job as an engineer on the top secret base her recently deceased dad was working on in Antarctica.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Seriously? 

 

Like, hey Halle, okay, here, this is a spark plug, this is how you change a car's oil, this is what a transmission does, to

Hey, forget MIT and years of training on advanced dark ops equipment with technology that hasn't been released to the public yet, come work on our Ice Base!

 

Halle, upon arrival, is then asked to fix an antenna or some sort, she goes outside and says 'Oh, duh, here, press this button, beep bop boop, all fixeroonied!' lmaooo. She's also walking outside in sub-zero temps for the first time with half her face exposed while wearing a cutesy little snow bunny outfit from REI.

Oh, and Coffee Dude gets an aneurysm, her home town probably got swallowed up in a sink hole, dude, this entire issue was completely useless. This has to be one of the silliest set-up issues in comic book history. Birksy, you could've started this issue at the last page when she just beep bop booped the antenna fix and then meets the cliffhanger chick, story starts.

This comic should have been called 'Halle Brrrrr-erry'. What a waste. Maybe they should track down the dude in the video above who knows all the secrets of Antarctica and have him write a comic book. It'll probably be awful, but at least it'll be true. Oy vey. What's next 'Mars-Nana' where Lizzo goes to Mars to plant banana trees for her dancer's poons and then hosts a music festival for the local aliens and Elvis Presley? I hear Lemire is working on that, sign me up!

Rating: 3.7

Verdict: Drop

KNIGHT TERRORS: BATMAN - Review #1

Oy. Vey. Night Terrors. The DC Night TerrorsI They’re everywhere! It’s scaaaary. Comic geeks everywhere are having trouble sleeping now, cuz, well, night terrors! Dude. Like, who thought this was a good idea? A corny AF Lobo looking dude is looking for something in the nightmares of every single DC Hero that has an ongoing title. Did they run this past Gaiman? I mean, at this point if you’re hitting up the whole nightmare and dream oeuvre you’ve got to at least text Sir Gaiman the Great, don’t you? I can’t see him signing off on this drivel. This is amateur hour single A baseball type nightmare stuff. Like, if I found myself on the 405 freeway at 4pm on a Friday out here with a lane shut off due to a mash-up and I had a choice between staying on the freeway or having this putz torment my dreams for a week or so I’d happily take this Road Warrior extra. 

For goodness sake can someone write a fucking amazing Batman comic! Maybe I should start a new blog and call it Bat-herapy and use it to vent all my angst, frustrations and stink eyes over the Bat Comic Universe. Look at this guy, this is the villain:

I mean, I have homeless people wandering around outside my Whole Foods that are more of a threat to my existence than this wahoo would ever be. So you just jacked up a guy with steroids, gave him a purple mohawk, got some cheap $12.99  eye make-up from a ‘Spirit of Halloween’ store, walked him into the DC offices and everyone freaked out and said 'That's our Mega Event Guy!'. This doesn’t look like some mega event bad guy this looks like a meth-curious North Hollywood barista who wanders into Bar Sinister in Hollywood on a Tuesday night and nurses a White Russian in the corner while making creepy eyes.

The only reason I bought this book to begin with was the fact that Guillem March was doing the art. One of the best, and most memorable books, of the past several years was March’s ‘Karmen’ which was about a girl who takes her life over a heartbreak and an Angel that helps her through her choices. Most of the time the spirit of this girl was flying around naked in the sky over this Spanish town. 

I will forever think fondly of this book and to this day I still look up in the sky every now and then hoping that I’ll see some random heartbroken naked chick flying over my head. When I do see her I’ll beckon her to join me for a naked coffee date. I’ll then give her a button down Yankee jersey to wear and a purple thong and we will walk hand in hand all over La La Land and the unhoused will serenade us with farts and belches that sound like the song ‘Strangers in the Night’.

Of course I get very stressed out about the fact that I might finally notice her while driving around LA and I’m sure I’ll get into a fender bender over her. When the cops show up and ask me my side of the story I’ll have to admit to them that I was chasing down a naked babe in the sky over the 101 and then I’ll be staring at padded walls in no time. I’d like to think that the readers of this blog will come to my rescue and explain to the employees of my loony bin that I am in fact not a wack job, that the naked babe in the sky was real. I can count on you guys for that, right?

Anyway, back to this shit show. So this Night Terrors event, umm, is DC hard up for cash? Like, if you bought up every comic that they have listed for this Night Terrors nightmare of a story line you’d be out around $250, that’s not counting any ridiculously expensive Jae Lee variant covers that you know you’ll be tempted to dip into now and then. Not only that, this ‘event’ only spans two months! Who the hell has $125 a month right now to drop on a bunch of mediocre comics with a Bar Sinister Bozo as the villain? This is how Mitch McConnell reacted when he heard that the new DC Mega Event with the Noho Fetanyl Addict would cost him $250 bucks the next two months:

How out of touch can DC be? Who is Ravager and Angel Breaker??? Those are two issues you’d have to buy to snatch up every Night Blah Blah book. I mean, did they anticipate the Hollywood Writer’s strike and are just pulling rejected story lines out of their hard drives from years ago just to keep up with releasing content? I’m pretty sure the Writer’s strike does not extend into the comic book world but maybe there’s a client comic scribe strike? Maybe they see the Big 2 threatening to replace them with AI also.

I wouldn’t be surprised if all the writers currently writing for DC and Marvisney aren’t even the writers anymore but are in fact the AI facsimile version of these writers. Like, they go into a meeting with a DC/Marvisney suit, the suit says hold on and exits the room, the writer is then scanned with advanced quantum technology and a chip is shot into their brain. All they feel is a tiny little scratch so they think nothing of it. 

So in the instance of this comic, Josh Williamson came into the meeting, the suit said ‘Hey waddya think of our new Mega Event Bar Sinister Meth Addict Villain from Tarzana?’ Josh would scoff and try not to insult the suit. He’d say ‘Uhh, interesting’. At that point the suit would leave and, boom, AI Josh gets extracted and they don’t need him anymore.

Oh wait, it’s Knight Terrors! Ha. That’s even worse. I mean, if they put this in medieval times maybe it’d come to life a bit more. Actually, I can see this taking place during a Renaissance Fair with a bunch of out of work actors in tunics and actresses in raggedy dresses from their roles as woeful women in a Chekhov/Strindberg festival from 1997. The Meth Actor Villain could be that actor guy who had a little bit too much trauma in their childhood and in lieu of going to therapy his parents sent him to auditions. Let me tell you, that actor guy is absolutely frightening. That guy is a fuse ready to blow and an assault on the object of their affection waiting to happen.

Now I'm totally freaked out. Because hordes of these psychos are now homeless and roaming LA due to the ungodly amount of money it costs to actually rent a place here. You geeks want some terrors to haunt your dreams? Head over to Venice, CA around 1am on a weeknight, that'll do you right. I bet you that's where my flying naked dream girl is taking flight. Why? Because nobody will bother her out there, they'll just assume they inhaled too much of the cheap psychedelics floating around in the air and chalk it up to a contact hallucination. 

Save your $250 people. Hell, save your $5. Donate that $5 instead to the 'Get Mitch McConnell a Case of Pepto Fund' and call it a day.

Rating: 4.4

Verdict: Drop. Zzzzzzzzzzz

July '23 Reading Round Up

The Bear. Wow. Have you watched it? Have you inhaled it like me? It was a bit of a slow burn as far as wow factor. The first several episodes stressed me the fuck out. I was worrying for hours after each episode ‘Shit, where are all the invoices, fire the mortadella capadella barbarella, fire all of them, where’s Jimmy? Richie shut the fuck up, Cousin, Cousin COUSIN!’ and my doggie would look at me like I was crazier than my regular crazy. Then I’d tell her to fire all the chickens and put some duct tape over our oven just in case. Once it hit its stride in the 1st season the second season became gold, episode after gold episode, like, must watch/TV for the ages type shit. You love everybody, you care about everything and every detail of this restaurant. You root for everyone and you cry in places you never thought you would. That is art my friends. That is all we can truly ask for, something that moves us and makes us pine for more. 

If you’re not watching ‘The Bear’ and you actually like good TV then I cannot recommend it more highly, it is a transcendent series and the best thing I’ve seen all year. 

Yes, this is a comic book blog but we still wish for the same things in our comic books: something that moves us, something that makes our eyes pop when we see the next issue come up on the monthly solicits, something that we think about for hours after we put it down. Have there been any books like that so far this year? I feel like last year was chock full of wow, month after month, this year? I’m dropping issues like insta is dropping followers from me on the daily for telling everybody the truth about every and anything. I’m dropping issues like the DOJ is dropping charges against Prince Crackhead. I'm dropping issues like the 'unhoused who don't have homes' be dropping poop all over Cali. What happened to all the Black Label goodies? Where’s Matt Fraction when you need him??? Dude, Fraction needs to come on the scene like Galactus with a strap-on and anal beads dangling from his butt and just put out a series to shut the world up.

I am ridiculously excited for the Conan book that drops this week, fingers crossed and Jewish starred. I just pulled a bunch of first issues that I picked up last week. A couple new ones this week, I'm tryin' people, jeez! 

Maybe I'm cranky cuz another Comic Con has come and gone, another year that I wasn't there. Another year where I see randos and friends of mine who haven't bought a comic in decades taking selfies at Comic Con like they were hanging out in front of a Carl's Jr. Seriously, there should be a written test, no multiple choice, in front of the Comic Con where you are asked all sorts of ridiculously hard comic book trivia. If you answer 85% or more you get to buy a ticket and go in. Or better yet, I should be able to walk up to the doors and show them my 'ComicsPriceGuide' account where it clearly displays the fact that I own over 5,000 comic books, 'Oh you're a comic geek, right this way nerdus dorkaroonus'.

Sigh. Anyway, this is what I got into this past month:

Deep cuts is a wonderful series. Each book is a vignette that pulls you in and keeps your attention. The second issue revolved around the story of a Broadway type gal looking for that big hit that sends her to the stars and back. There's even a page of sheet music in the back that supposedly is her tune. I was all set to actually figure it out and drop an audio track here for you guys of what the song sounds like but I'm too busy banging my head on the keys of my piano figuring out Beethoven's Fur Elise, so, yeah, no ragtime type ish to give you.  

I was little confused as to why the chick on the cover looks like Rosario Dawson but the chick in the book that the story was written about is some alabaster skinned blonde with curly hair. Umm, like, what, we can't even have Blondes on comic book covers now? Man, it is tough being a blonde chick these days. 

 

Phantom Road. I mean, this has TV show written all over it. Actually, everythingLemire touches has TV show written all over it. Why isn't there a direct line from Lemire's room in his house where he draws all this stuff, to Image, to my TV for 6-8 episodes every couple of months. There's nothing unbelievable about this series but he's just so fucking good at hooking you that you have to find out where it goes, and most of the time it's worth it. Maybe I need to put that on my Dating App Profile: Must rock dates and relationships like Jeff Lemire rocks comic book concepts. That would at least get the girls who don't reply to me at all to delete me from their like list which would prove to me they were either alive or that it was AI teaching me a lesson about making bad dating profiles.I dunno AI, why not just get me into comic con so I can meet my Lemire babe? Fuckin AI, useless.

Something Epic's second installment was, hmm, I dunno, Something Really Good, but not epic. Can’t really put my finger on why other than the fact that the lengthy exposition seemed to drift more into standard idioms and extensive soliloquy rather than getting deeper into the story. Also, felt like this issue got even drearier and darker than the first one which is understandable given the health reveal of the Mom. There was an interesting intersection between the world of imagination and that of reality but other than that it seemed more of a set-up for what’s to come which is fine by me, after that stellar first issue this series has enough capital to keep me around for several months. C'mon Epic, I'm betting on you like I'm betting on a Porsche when I pull up to a light and have to choose between it and another car. Douchebags love to peel out when it turns green. 

Do people still say peel out? Well, I do.

I had high hopes for this book, really high hopes. But it devolved into some cheesy Cartoon Network/Adult Swim hooey that's big on colors and bold lines but slim on a captivating story. Yeah, I'm not paying 30 bux more to find out if I’m gonna end up feeling upset or deeply troubled about having continued to have purchased these 8 dollar issues. It's pretty to look at. However, when you live in LA for as long as I have you realize pretty to look at today very likely means trouble and a door slam in your grill tomorrow. I mean, look at the cover. If that punch in the grill isn't a portent of things to come then I don't know portents. That's one major fucking portent. Yeah, drop this issue like Kendall Jenner drops toxic cosmetic lines.

 Do people still say grill? Like, all up in yo grill?

Well I do.

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