OLD DOG #1 - Review

Do you have a Comic Book Shop Mecca where you live? I don’t. I used to but I don’t anymore which is puzzling because I live in Los Angeles. One would think LA, the breeding ground and destination for comic book geeks seeking fame, fortune, silicon body parts and hipster validation would most certainly accommodate these nerds with a Shop that gleams and glistens in the smoggy sun. Nope. But we did. It was called ‘Meltdown Comics’ and it was glorious.

 

When I first moved to LA I lived around the corner from them on Sunset Blvd when they were a tiny shop on the north side of the street; nothing special. But upon moving to the cavernous space across the street from them the Comic Book Universe in LA changed. This place had everything: new issues, back issues, merch, toys, gear, D&D campaigns, nerds, babes wandering in dressed in mini skirts, combat boots, multicolored knee high socks, pigtails and their midriff showing their newly minted belly ring…it was a Gawker’s Paradise.

 

Celebrities and Comic Book luminaries began pouring in for book signings and shows. The back area became the go-to spot for Comedians and Sketch Artists working out their stuff. Matt Groenig was known to sneak in and sit in the back row. And this was all happening around the corner from me! I was where I was meant to be on the planet, in La La Land and Comic Book Nirvana. The crazy thing was that I didn’t have my pull list at Meltdown. Why? Well, the comic book shop that I actually did go to (and still do) gave customers 20% off and free bags and boards. Meltdown only gave 10% off and no bags and boards. The Jew in me couldn’t resist the deal. Yeah, I don’t care if I have to swim through a cauldron of rotting pigs feet if I’m getting an extra 10-15% off my monthly habit along with some free goodies. But I was always at Meltdown, who wasn’t?

 

I say all this because one day I meandered in and sitting at a table was a very non-descript sheepish scruffy guy who was there to sign his comic books. At first I thought it was Declan Shalvey and I got all excited and happily bought his book. I’m pretty sure I said ‘Thanks Decks!’ It wasn’t him. Oy vey. It was a new comic book creator that was promoting his new work and it was actually great (the name of him escapes me) but every time I see a Declan Shalvey title I always think of me calling his comic doppelganger ‘Decks’. Since then Meltdown has closed its doors, even before the cee ninteen shut down. It couldn’t compete with the digital world and since I knew the guy who ran it pretty well he confided in me that rents in the area were soaring and they just couldn’t keep up. Since then the entire block was razed to the ground and looks like new residences and store fronts are coming in. What a shame. There was also this cool Vegan spot down the block that I supported all the time, loved the owner as well, they did comedy nights there and poetry and music; a wonderful place for the community. And man, the girls that worked there were ridiculously cute.

 

Now you look at the Comic Shop landscape in LA and where’s the mecca? There isn’t one. Yeah, there’s a lot of great shops and cool hole in the walls but nothing that makes you go, ‘Wow, this place is unbelievable’. My fantasy is to one day build that place here. I can't wait to be taken to the hospital when I find out the real numbers and mechanics of the insane variant cover scam.

 

As for this comic, it’s okay. A former wrinkly ornery Agent Guy finds himself on a crap job doing surveillance when all of a sudden he’s back in action due to a simple mission going awry. Next thing you know he’s shooting at a dude in a body suit that inadvertently blows up this enormous machine that somehow turns back time to make him look like the younger version of himself. SPOILER: At the end he’s put back in action with, wait for it…his daughter…and he looks as young as her…and she calls him Dad. And they’re jumping outta windows doing super spy shit together.

 

It’s a cool little wrinkle Decks. I’ll tag along for a bit. I’ll sign up for the long haul if you can email me and remind me who the hell that guy was that looks like you; ‘cause he was a serious comic book bad ass. Now pardon me as I stare out of my window and dream of the day when a cavernous comic heaven welcomes comic geek babes and their mini skirts, combat boots, multicolored knee high socks, pigtails and newly minted belly rings. The funny thing about talking to these girls when you meet them in a comic book shop is that you can't help but sound like Butthead 'So, uh, uh huh huh huh huh, you like, uhhh, Spidey, uh huh huh'.

 

Rating: 7.9

Verdict: Pull

PARKER GIRLS #1 & #2 - Review

I love me some Terry Moore. There’s no other creator out there that does what he does. He puts out what he wants when he wants how he wants. It’s his own imprint. It’s just his stuff. He writes and draws all of it and never uses color. No ads. If Prince was a comic book creator he’d be just like Terry Moore although there’d be waaaay more naughty stuff, lingerie and purple outlines. Like Prince, you can tell that Terry loves women. All of his leads are pretty much women and to varying degrees they all kick serious ass although I've yet to see one do the splits.

 

If you look at actual pictures of Terry Moore he looks like the kind of guy that would be featured in an episode of ‘Six Feet Under’. He's that odd bald guy that would switch back and forth between bawling and making cartoonish faces in a funeral parlor. He'd have some hot vixen in heels and a pompadour with him and he'd be sketching her while Michael C. Hall stares and wonders how to get him to fork over a grip for a casket.

 

Anyway, many moons ago I was traipsing around the web and found the entire ‘Strangers in Paradise’ comic book run on Craigslist here in LA; it was selling for like $100. I dove right in and loved all of it. But then the series took a wacky turn when it got into this international spy conspiracy global conglomerate stuff. This was a while ago but I remember there being all these threats on the main characters from these agents and hit men and I’m like ‘Whooaaa, how did we go from two cutesy lesbians and a Metro dude  in an art Gallery to Mission Impossible? So I put it away and have yet to finish the series.

 

Since then Moore has had some hits and misses. His best book by far if you ask me is ‘Echo’; it’s just perfectly done and balances his whole global intrigue with deep interpersonal relationships. Then ‘Rachel Rising’ came out and that was also a spectacular series that blended massive biblical implications with a small town horror vibe. The subsequent series were…mnyeh. Nothing great but nothing unreadable. His last go round was called ‘Serial’ which spun out of Rachel Rising and followed the little psychopath hatchet loving demon girl as she tried to hunt down another killer. That series got waaay too gory and violent for my taste so I had to drop that one also.

 

Now we get ‘Parker Girls’. Hmm. So, I remember this whole deal from previous series. These chicks are bad ass global agents that do all kinds of spy assassin stuff and they’re the best at what they do yadda yadda yadda. Terry Moore, you are a genius when it comes to writing relationships and emotions. Die Hard 5? Not so much. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination it’s just…I mean, Billy Joel doing Metallica could be okay but you’re like, ‘Dude, piano stuff homie, c’mon, bring the bottle of red and shit’.

 

The basic premise? Some accountant dude steals a bunch of money from some rich white CEO assholy dude who finds him and leaves him naked in a desert after he was banged the night before by a Parker Chick who takes the money he stole. Then the CEO’s wifey washes ashore dead somewhere else while the main Hulkamania lookin’ Parker chick goes to Kachoo in her art gallery (the best SIP babe) to recruit her for God knows what. It feels a bit dated to me. Not sure if that's Terry's intent but it gives me 90s action TV show/late night HBO series vibe. A couple of the Parker Girls are called Cherry Hammer and Becky the Gun Girl which sounds more like Roller Derby names than international spy chicks. Maybe Terry should do a Roller Derby Suicide Girl series, that would be amayyyyyzing. 

 

Look, the best thing about Terry Moore books is that you can gobble them up in just a few minutes. So if you’re in a rush and just sitting down for a sec with your morning java you can knock a few of these puppies out in a heartbeat, which is what I did. I’ll strap myself in for the ride but I got a parachute nearby and I'll disappear like Matt Fraction does in the middle of a series just in case Hans Gruber shows up.

 

Rating: 7.5

Verdict: Pull on alert.

September '22 Reading Round Up

 

 

 

All the comics I’ve reviewed in September are right where you need them. Book of the month by far is Andromeda, it is beyond amazing; pick that up yesterday. Loved the start of Love Everlasting by Tom King as well. Daredevil also made a nice comeback from a middling start to their post mega cross over event nonsense.

Seven Sons #3

 

Andromeda #2 

New Think 3.0

 

Detective Comics #1063 

Batman One Bad Day: Riddler

 

Batman. White Knight: Red Hood 1 & 2 

Mind MGMT: Bootleg #2

 

Daredevil #2 

Love Everlasting #1

 

Starhenge: Dragon & The Boar #2 

Trve Kvlt #1

 

 

Remember, you pull your pull list not the other way around!  - Issac

SEVEN SONS #3 - Review

 

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the world of dating and relationships it is this: You can’t bank on potential. Meaning, you can’t be with someone based on who you think they are going to be or who they can be. You’re with who you’re with. But if she only…no, she won’t only that or this or the thing that unlocks her X Men superpower, she won’t. You could beg and plead and cajole over and over but it won’t matter. Millions upon billions of people have let their potential go to poop why do you think this one’s any different? Because she’s bobbing on your knob and makes a great quesadilla? Better to jump ship before you spend your entire life living off of potential with a perpetual scowl on your face and a scar on your soul.

Deep. I know. This is a comic book thingamajig, right? Yup. Seven Sons is that super babe with potential who just isn’t seeming to get it right. I could stick around for the entire series but I know those feelings I’m going to feel at the end of it all: resentment, confusion, defeat. My goodness it looks soooo good. Jae Lee is a bonafide super duper star artist, for rizzle. But this story is officially off the fucking rails. 

First of all, what’s with this cover? Half naked ethnicky dude with a Stranger Things Demogorgon mouth on his chest. If I jump into that will it take me to the set of Stranger Things Season 5? Pretty please! No. It won’t and there’s nothing in this book that even references the gaping maw on this cover. So I looked up this Robert Windom dude who wrote this book with another guy. The first thing that it says about him is that he’s an entertainment attorney. Hoo boy. His claim to fame is that he wrote some indy rom com you never heard of called Stars Fell on Alabama. Now I’m wondering how did Jae Lee get roped into this? Is this his attorney? Did he lose a bet? Is he blackmailing him off of a K Town Karaoke night gone bad? Believe me, you wanna blackmail somebody just take them to a K Town Karaoke night VIP style, it will bring out their inner demon or damning footage involving an REO Speedwagon tune.

Next thing I realize is that the co-writer of the book is a guy named Kelvin Mao who also wrote some action film called 10 minutes gone several years ago that nobody hear of. Then I found this pic of him:

Look at all that alcohol! Look at the guy next to him with THREE glasses to Mao’s one. Look at his T-Shirt! Vandersexxx. Had to look that one up, seems like it’s a reference to a Eurotrip Movie where Lucy Lawless was in a scene as a Dominatrix. Attorney.  Alcohol. Karaoke. Dominatrix. Super Star Comic Book Artist. Second Rate Hacks. It’s starting to add up isn’t it?  Jae are you in trouble? You need someone to come talk to these dudes? I know people who know people who know people, namean?

As for this specific issue, dude, I mean, I don’t know what the hell is going anymore. Radical Islamic psychos from 1999 central casting show up every few pages and shoot any and everyone. We’re down to, I think don’t quote me, 2 sons? One escapes which is completely unbelievable since the control freak religious fanatical con artist dad would have cameras and people everywhere at all times keeping tabs on the sons. The son who is plastered all over the country as the second coming escapes is still somehow fooling people in this blonde Final Fantasy wig that he got at CVS for $4.99. Like if Beyonce walked outside with a red wig we’d all go, hmm who is that? 

Finally he randomly ends up on a train? What? Following clues that a son just killed by the 1999 Die Hard rejects wanted him to find. Uggh. It looks lovely. I love Jae Lee. This apparently is his first series since 1994. I can only imagine he’s tied up somewhere in Kelvin Mao’s K Town apartment with the Attorney Dude walking around in heels and fishnets forcing him to illustrate their story. They’re both laughing and eating hot wings in the living room and swiping through Tinder or Grndrr or whatever while one of the great Comic Book Cover Artists of our generation is eating top ramen and drinking room temp mountain dews as he works off his Karaoke debt.

Don’t go to K Town unless you’re prepared to pay the consequences.

Rating: 4.5

Verdict: Drop

ANDROMEDA #2 - Review

 

Is Andromeda the best Hero Comic of the year? Yes. Is it the best comic of the year regardless of genre? Probably. How good is Andromeda? The first issue was beyond perfect and the second issue, which can be a pitfall in a series, actually gets better. Feel free to continue reading this review as I go to thesaurus.com and type in ‘fucking awesome’ to get a bunch of synonyms or instead you can just hop on over to your local comic book shop and pick up the first two issues of this series as if a government official just appeared on your TV with a somber look and a ticker underneath them and told you to do so.

 

Ah yes and this tidy little tidbit…this is an AQUAMAN comic! Aquaman. Never ever in my entire comic book life have I ever bought an Aquaman comic. Not once. Complete storylines from the 60s and 70s in perfect condition at a garage sale for 10 cents a book? Nah, I’m good. I give Aquaman the stink eye every time I see him in a Bat Book like Metal or whatever the hell that mess was that Synder did after his amazing run on Batman. No I have not watched the new Aqua-Momoa movie-oma stuff either. I don’t trust that guy. Oh but he’s so nice and affable and personable, yeah yeah, crap is going to come out on him, you watch. But this? Wow.

 

Christian Ward is by far one of my favorite artists of the past several years. His pages are lush and breathtaking and these first couple of issues do not disappoint. Some of the splash pages are absolutely gorgeous and the large prestige format brings it to another level. I mean, I’m just sitting there looking at some of them for minutes on end. I feel like Ward has had a bit of bad luck with the creators he’s collaborated with throughout his career. He was on that Fraction ODY-C series which was unbelievable but like every Fraction series just fizzled out right in the middle. You have to wonder if Matt Fraction cuts his poops short and just gets up. What else is he walking out on in the middle of? I see Fraction on a flight I’m sprinting out of the plane before it takes off because I have no doubt that he’ll be looking for a way to parachute out in the middle of the flight.

 

Ward also drew Invisible Kingdom which was a great series as well but for some reason just stopped its monthly releases and published its final issues in a graphic novel (which I have yet to get). I think his first series I saw him on was Infinite Vacation and that also took forever to wrap up. If I remember correctly the final issue was a year plus in the making. He wrote a Vampire series called ‘Blood Stained Teeth’ recently and that was plain blecch. Perhaps the Comic Gods have finally rewarded him with this monumental comic for the ages with bad ass writer of the moment Ram V.

 

Look, the story is nothing really special. It uses the basic ‘Alien Ship/Let’s go have a looksee/Oh no everybody’s weird now’ Sci-Fi trope that’s been used over and over. Yet it’s done so majestically with Aquaman (AQUAMAN WTF???) being presented as a true mythical mysterious hero of the deep fighting to save the humans from themselves. The introduction of the Black Manta is subtle yet strong enough to twist and turn the plot without being too heavy handed. It’s written poetically. It’s drawn as if Ward’s life depends on him proving to the world how much of a genius he is.

 

Black Label knocks it out of the park…again. It feels like to me that DC is just letting these amazing talents run free without too much nitpicking and hand holding. Perhaps they have a different approach for their non-black label titles but whatever and however they’re doing it is producing pure gold on the comic racks. Reading these black label titles versus regular DC books is like watching Curb Your Enthusiasm versus Seinfeld: You’re getting real punch you in the gut stories not formulaic stuff that’s been proven to work over and over. In other news, what the hell is Marvel doing over there??? They have all the money in the world, can hire whoever the hell they want and yet it’s pure tripe on the racks from them. It feels like when Top Tier Talent walks into a Marvel Office they’re restrained by a lackey at which point an editor will walk over to them, yank their pants down and put metal clamps on their nuts ‘This is how it’s gonna be funny paper guy! You do as you’re told and we’ll give your balls back when we’re done’.

 

Maybe they put one of these on each nut while asking what your pronouns are:

 

 

Anyway, Andromeda. Aquaman. Ward. Ram V. Black Label. The first 10 rating from my fledgling Comic Book Review life and beyond well deserved. Go get it!

 

Rating: 10.0

Verdict: Pull. Yank. Steal. Grab. Frame.

NEW THINK 3.0 - Review

 

It’s a Jewish New Year! It’s a New Moon! It’s a new day to read a newish comic series asking you to think anew. It’s New Think 3.0! From a somewhat new comic book publisher. So, nu? Is it good? Nu is Yiddish for ‘okay, well’ in case ya didn’t know. In other Yiddish news I finally got a match on my exclusive dating app with some shiksa who will probably never respond to my mundane message. Nothing new there!

 

The previous issues of this anthology series had a cautionary commentary on the vacuum suck that is our phones followed by a cutesy fable on the need to speak your truth even if putzy monarchs force you to live in a glass house and give up your privacy. As I was zipping back home from Brooklyn on a flight back to La La Land the cover depicting a digitized Marilyn Monroe in her iconic white dress over the steam grate pose positioned now over a cell phone seemed the perfect accompaniment.

 

Before I could get into it the cute passenger in the seat next to me for whatever reason took an interest in me and ended up chatting me the entire flight home. Turns out she’s a member of a Chinese Girl Group that sings 90s R&B style songs, they’re good! Anyway, out of all the things we talked about one of them was about me needing to get a TikTok account so I can begin to connect with Gen Z. According to her Gen Z would looooove me and would help blow up my upcoming one man show. I was intrigued. Actually was about to get tikky with it but since Insta is always listening to you even on airplane mode the next day I got this video right at the top of my feed:

 

 

How dare you consider a competitor Issac! Here have some more reels with girls wiggling their wigglies in your face. I swear I looked at one (maybe two...or three) wiggly reel and now every chance Insta gets it has wiggly girls on my feed. That’s all they are. Girls in bikinis reach to press record and then just jiggle their stuff. Is this a thing? What is the purpose of these girls? How does this make anyone money? Is it just to look inside my mouth as I gape? Are you getting dental data? Or do you want to see if you can make me walk into a street sign?

 

Yes this is a comic book review. Okay, look, this issue wasn’t really a story; it was a commentary.  A commentary on the pervasive intrusive all encompassing hold a phone can have over your life. Written in the first person of said generic phone it wound its way through the myriad of ways it wove its web around your existence and nudged you along to its grand design. Problem is, you got the sentiment within a few pages, but it kept going and going and going alllll the way until the end. It was quite similar to the first issue of this ‘series’. Got it. Phones be creeping and brain tweaking but for goodness sake give me a plot. A Protagonist. Some semblance of a story. Had Greg Hurwitz built off of this concept with a few pages of the evil phone intent and given us a narrative, some obstacles, anything to make us feel someone or something was out there fighting the fight then maybe this could have been a powerful book.

 

As it stands it’s just a treatise. It’s a diatribe at a Poetry Slam. Yes it gets a bunch of snaps and mm hmmms from the crowd but I’m not sitting next to a boho babe with ripped jeans, natty hair, a nose-ring and a butterfly tat who will reject me due to being too square. I’m sitting next to my doggie in my Lay-Z-Boy flipping through these pages begging for a story. Didn’t get one. Can’t go on. Love me some good indie tales but my new thinking on letting go of what doesn’t work in my life includes this series. Yeah, I think not.

 

I didn't even get me some Marilyn although I'm sure her great granddaughter is jiggling somewhere on my insta feed if I stop and [BONK] Wow. Street signs are much more sturdier than they look.

 

Rating: 5.5

Verdict: Drop

DETECTIVE COMICS #1063 - Review

 

There’s something about reading a Batman comic in NYC that feels right. It’s where he was born. It’s where he belongs. It’s like performing Shakespeare in London or listening to today's Top 20 songs in a Porta-Potty. I’m actually staying in Brooklyn so I wondered, besides Biggie Smalls and Jay Z who are the superheroes of this borough? Hoo boy, slim pickings. You got Miles Morales who, I dunno, it’s like Spidey Lite. It’s Nightwing or Bucky or the new Mongolian Robin. One of them shows up and you’re like ‘Cool’ but you’re not like ‘Oh Shit!’. After Miles it gets oooogly. There’s some guy named ‘The Purple Heart’ who appears in some web comic all purpled out and engulfed in purple flames. Seems like he needs to transfer over to the West Village. Then there’s some dude named ‘The Brooklynite’ another web comic dude who was a cartoonist that got radiated and turned into a guy with ‘Superman powers and Spiderman problems’. Yeah, there be slim pickings fo sho. 

 

Anwyay, I was psyched to dig back into this new Detective Comics tale. For those keeping score last issue I compared this title to a couple of twins where one was a hottie and one was a nottie. This title in relation to Batman was always the nottie but (hum Bad Romance but Gaga)

 

Ram, Ram ma ma mahhh

Ramma Momma Ma

Batty Shmatty Ooh Ramma Mah

 

Ram V! Ram V came with the goods and hooked me with a solid issue. As the sirens blared and the construction whinged in my ears I dove back into the Nottie Title that was transformed into a Hottie and man, it reverted back to full Nottie on me. What the hell happened? Okay so, some Eastern European Vampiric Ghoulish Ancient Sect of Occulty Psychos named the Orghams are coming back to claim the rights for Arkham. That's fine. I think they could make out better if instead they focused on buying out a bunch of buildings from Landlords who can't evict anyone due to pandemic rulings. They could make a killing there. Some blonde dude on a ship gets angry for some reason after a woman who's got a three pronged plug outlet for her eyes chats him up which causes his hands to melt the railing.I get it, babes with USB outlets for eyes are much kinder and diplomatic for sure.

 

Two Face is sitting in an empty club looking like the Phantom of the Opera with some half mask covering up his face listening to a hot blonde croon some random tune. Who is this girl? Is she on dating apps? I bet she’s stringing some loser along who thinks he has a shot with her but she keeps cancelling on him due to her ‘Sing to a Bat Villain in n empty club’ gig. Apparently Twoferone is now a shell of his former self and when Bats shows up he acts like he’s his therapist. Several pages later one of the ancient sect psychos is blowing something in face that debilitates him and has Twosies frothing at the mouth on the street. Did they use that Colombian ‘Devil’s Breath’ on him where you can get anyone to do whatever you want if you breath it on them. If I could get my hands on that stuff I would hook it up to a diffuser on the hood of my car so I could spray it all over LA Traffic. Then I’d get a bullhorn and tell everyone to pull over. Imagine driving up the 405 at 4p on Friday with nothing but a clear road. Thanks Devil!

 

The Commish Gordon back-up story was okay, nothing special. The non-binaryish dude chick from the first issue somehow escaped a bunch of armed men in an enclosed space and just showed up next to Gordon in a cemetary. I feel totally blindsided after such a great first issue of this story. It’s like I relented and took out the Nottie Twin and she showed up all cute and acted wonderfully on our first date. Emboldened I asked her out again and invited her to a party with actual people. Next thing I know she’s shoving food in her blouse like a drunk Dan Akroyd Santa from Trading Places and dancing like Elaine Benes on the kitchen counter. Nooo bad Nottie, no! The only way I’m able to escape the party and get her out is because I agree to let her get naked piggy back on my shoulders as I bray like a donkey and gallop to my car. That’s what THIS issue is. Bats braying like a donkey and Commish Gordon is dancing like Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker on the stairs but slipping and falling down them.

 

You know what this comic is? So, you know when you walk into a comic book shop for the first time and you head to the back issue section? You’re always looking for deals or mispriced issues. I’ll rifle through the Hulks and the Conans and then make my way over to the Bat stuff. So if I’m browsing the back Bat stuff I’ll inevitable come upon some Detective Comics and there will always be a bunch from like the 80s or 90s that for some reason are priced at $2-3. I’ll see the covers and go, hmm, these look kinda cool, and they’re cheap. So I’ll piece together the issues so I have a complete story and then think that I scored, ‘Sweet I just got almost a dozen Bat books for a twenty spot’. But then I’ll go home and start reading them and go ‘Ohhh, yeah, I get it, these are two bones because they suck’.

 

That’s what this issue turned into. Twenty years from now some AI Kid living in a hologram above the earth is going to unplug and send his virtual avatar to an earthly comic book museum and he’ll find this crinkled book and see the cover and think, ‘This is bloongy cadoongy’ (the new word for cool). Sorry kid.

 

I’m gonna give Rammy Vee the benefit of the doubt after a solid first issue and give it another try next month but if Nottie is dressed like a Furry and forcing me to join her in a Tik Tok challenge in the middle of the street I’m dropping her and this title. 

 

Rating: 7.6

Verdict: Pull on Alert

BATMAN ONE BAD DAY: THE RIDDLER #1 - Review

 

 

I’m in Brooklyn! Just a couple of swift crammed stink rides in a metal tube away from Gotham and good ol’ Bats and his never ending expanding shifting sands of a Bat crew. I think Batman would get a lot more respect and fist bumps if he decided to center his operations in Brooklyn rather than Gotham. My Mom has a place in Little Caribbean. While interrogating nasty criminals Bats would have to raise his voice a lot louder than his trademark growl ‘cuz they be blasting music all hours of the day around here 'I said, have you seen Fast Boi Booyaka Shot!?! CAN YOU HEAR ME'

Well, after the White Knight Red Riding Hood debacle last week I need to right the Bats ship. So I took a couple of Bat Books with me on the trip with one of them being this ‘One Bad Day’ thingamajig. It was a Tom King thingamajig which had me nervous. King on Everlasting Love=woo hoo. King on Bat/Cat=blaaarrrgh. I don’t know what this One Bad Day set-up is or how it relates to the amorphous blob that is the Bat Universe. One cursory glance at the inter-webs says it’s going to be a six issue series with a different villain and creative team every month. Oy. That just screams: Random Comic Continuity Mess. With each book being 8 bones that’s asking me to drop about 50 bux to experience a very long bad Bat day. That’s a lot to ask. So this first one better be frikkin amazing. You better lead off with Derek Jeter and not Luis Polonia or Aaron Hicks. You think ‘King’ of the Bat Dud can bring it? Okayyyyyy.

First things first, the art. Boom. Never heard of and don’t recognize the name of Mitch Gerads but I’m really loving what I see here. I will say that Bruce Wayne looks a LOT like Jon Hamm. And since Jon Hamm is doing Progressive commercials that have him flirting with Flo it kind of puts a minor stink on it. Why does Jon Hamm have to hock insurance? Why is Jon Hamm in my comic book? Is Flo here too? Is the one bad day a reference to the day Jon Hamm decided to sign on for hokey insurance salesman?   

Okay, let me get ready for another Riddler script. Last Riddler I got was The Batman flick. The Riddler story in the recent Batman flick was mnyeh, right? I loved Robert Pattison, thought the story was nothing special. I think they could have redeemed the entire plot with a strong twist of an ending with him but Riddler turning himself in to watch his master plan play out from prison seemed completely out of character. Add in the fact that you got a glimpse of some random actor dude looking like Romero from Escape from New York thinking he’s the Joker and the movie just dropped down a Bat sinkhole. But this Riddler tale? Interesting.

So Riddler’s now deciding to be a brutal psychopath by offing a random guy on the street with no riddle attached to the murder; he just does it. In fact, most of this book is a whole lot of graphic brutality. Copious amounts of bloody panels. We get a head shot off, a shark heading for a guy’s blood who’s tied up  and being tortured by Bats , a prisoner stabbing himself in the neck, a prison guard getting his fingers chopped off and five cops murdering each other in jail with guns…all by the halfway point. Yipes! Is this Black Label? No. Hmm. That’s a whole lot of violent violence getting violently vile. 

The funny thing is you have allll this graphic bloody death and yet NO cursing. So you can show a guy spurting blood out the neck or fingers being sawed off but, fuck? Nooo, gotta keep the kids mouths nice and tidy. Here’s a fun game to do with this book, try to figure out if there’s an actual pattern to the symbols King uses to zap out curse words:

@$%#%% = Fuck or Son of a Bitch or God Dammit. Probably SOB.

@%#@ = Shit. That’s for sure.

@%@$ = Fuck. That’s about right.

@%@$ = Fucking. Seems like he needs an extra dollar sign.

@%@%= This is also fucking. Hmm.

Looks like King is just hitting the ‘Shift’ key and then randomly wiggling his fingers over the 2,3,4,5 keys to get a @#$%. Layyy-zeeee.

Throughout the book Batman pretty much does nothing but stand still while glowering with his eyes glowing as his cape drapes down over his shoulders. Here he is glowering and glowing in this panel.  Now he’s far away and glowering and glowing. He just popped out of nowhere and he”s glowering and glowing. But guess what? It’s a really great story! King pulls it out. He Jeters the book! He was 0-3 and then came up in the bottom of the 8th and went oppo with a bases clearing double. We really get a unique slice and deep dive into the Riddler and his motives. The ‘I’m going rando’ approach really ups the ante and you get the same sense of empathetic madness that made Joaquin’s Joker so special. 

I coulda done without all the excess violence and I don’t know that this is necessarily a ‘Bad Bat Day’ per se, but the stellar art and inventive back story really came together for me. Alright King, you get Konged on this one. Just, I dunno, let’s not cast Jon Hamm as Bats anymore mmkay? I mean what the @#@$@$@$%%?

Rating: 8.6

Verdict: Pull it you #@#%

BATMAN: WHITE KNIGHTPRESENTS: RED HOOD #1 & #2 - Review

 

I’ve read hundreds upon hundreds of Batman books. However, if I showed up to the holy gates of Comic Con and they were about to let me in but only if I explained all the back stories of all the Robins in the Bat Universe…I would fail miserably. I can’t keep up with them or who they’ve become or been. Why should I? Sidekicks are sidekicks for a reason. French Fries. Asparagus. Your mistress. They’re all on the side. You put them front and center then you got issues.

 

Okay there’s Dick and then this Jason dude. I know nothing about this Jason guy. And Damien? He’s the Bat kid but who’s his mommy? Catwoman? Which one? The Michelle Pfeiffer one I hope. Or is it Kim Bassinger? Did she move on to Bats after Prince and pop out a Bat Kid on the down low before hooking up with Alec Baldwin? Nightwing is…Dick? What’s the name of the Robin chick in the Dark Knight Returns? Chloe? Veronica? Emma? I don’t know!

 

Well now we get a Jason Todd story in the impeccable White Knight Universe. My goodness Sean Murphy you are a God. From Tokyo Ghost to Punk Rock Jesus to the buhrillliant White Knight series you are a true gem. So Murph makes Jay Tee the original Robin in this Universe. Fine, whatever, I don’t care. Make him Aquaman or Lois Lane, just keep feeding me White Knight stuff. Well the busy guys in the False Advertising department pulled a fast one. See they got me buying this two issue series based on the covers being drawn by King Murph but when you crack these puppies open? W. T. F.

 

So it’s written by this Clay dude and let me tell you, it looks like a kiddie comic. Like, my comic book shop sells kiddie comics on a rack near the register for a buck each. Nice right? Kids can come in and get into comics really inexpensively. Well, they should drop this Red Riding Hoodie book right in there with them. It looks like Batman the Animated Series. It’s like a step up from anime. I almost expected that whooshing graphic that all anime films have. It’s cornballaroonski. What hast thou done DC?

 

And who the hell is this ridiculous villain??? Shriek??? Why not just make him Screech and bring back our beloved Saved by the Bell character but with advanced audio tech. Some homie from the Bronx in a fancy pad has Tesla Sound Cannon tech and wants to, I dunno, assault people in a club with it? Have you been to a club recently Clay? The trash mumbly music from hell is ALREADY doing that. This Shrieky dude is probably doing the community a favor. How did we go from Bat perfection into amateur hour? What goofus doofus decided this two issue series was a good idea? Was Murph on board? No way. I can’t believe this Comic Book Bad Ass knew anything about it. He was probably ambushed.

 

I can see Sean Murphy walking into DC offices and being grabbed and tossed into an office as the door slams behind him.

 

DC: We're doing a Red Hood/White Knight and you’re gonna fucking like it.

 

Sean: I'm gonna huh? Who?

 

DC: Red Hood it's Jason, Robin remember? You agreed when we got you sloshed on sake at Sushi last month.

 

Sean: I can't keep up with Robin I delegated that to my -

 

DC: We need an Asian Robin chick.

 

Sean: Look guys, I'm on a deadline -

 

DC: Chad's doing it. This is Chad. He’s made his offering to Ba'al and is grooming three Haitians over the weekend for Corporate's retreat in October. Chad is a plus.

 

Sean: Umm, okay, plus what?

 

DC: In the LGBT masthead, he's a plus. Oh, and you're doing the fucking covers.

 

Sean: Fine, wait Asian Robin?

 

DC: Chick! Asian Robin Chick. Big subplot in issue 5.

 

Chad: Can I sit on Sean's head to absorb some of his genius.

DC: We'd be upset if you didn't.

 

Look what I found! Sean (a real mensch) the Genius behind the White Knight and this frikkin schmuckeroonskl Clay:

 

 

Look at him. Look at that schlub! Hipster nitwit! Notice anything here in this video? I’ll wait. Yup. There’s only one person with a microphone on the chairs…it’s Sean! The guy you want to talk to. Look, he has to stick the mic in front of Grizzly Madams to give him a voice. CLEARLY Sean was all by his onesies about to get the interview and Boom! This Seth Rogen idolater is dropped right in by the DC Bigwigs. Clay. Clay’s in. Look at the interviewer, he’s mad nervous. There’s probably suits surrounding them giving them the stink eye.

 

Clay, you and your Jaws 2 T shirt, you think you’re soooo cute and hip don’t you? Look here you ‘beyond meat’ eating Bernie voting he/babymomma/they yutz, you stay the hell away from my Sean Murphy and my Black Label. Only you could find a way to put the mush on a near perfect imprint. They could no wrong! They were unblemished til you and your kiddy Bats and Asian Serena showed up. Yeah, he called her an Asian Serena in the interview! That’s what I was missing! Who knew! I was sitting there dreaming about White Knight #5 coming out with Batman and the Joker hologram (a geeeneeyus move by Murph) and in my dream my higher self came down on its Bat flying carpet and whispered into my sub conscious ‘You desire a Mongolian Serena created by a queer bear who eats daiya pizzas!’

 

Uggh. What a waste of 10 bucks. I just pulled both issues and put them aside, saving them for a special moment when I wanted to dive back into White Knight Paradise. It’s put a whole stink on my boiling excitement for the impending release of issue 5 of the greatest alternative Bat universe ever created! Black Label, this is a dark stain on your comic soul. Do not let it happen again. I give you a pass. But if you dare taint this series one more time I’m only a hop skip and five traffic jams away from your 4000 Warner Blvd offices in Burbank. Me and security guards get along reaaal nicely, zero issue of me getting past them all and slugging you and Clay with a frozen block of Wagyu ground beef as the Anime Whoosh graphic appears behind me.

 

Rating: 4.2

Verdict: Drop and donate to the local library.

MIND MGMT: BOOTLEG #2 - Review

 

In the late 2000s I had grown weary of the LA Club scene. The incessant hamster wheel of doing everything you could do to vault past a velvet rope to squeeze into an overcrowded circus of vacuous people to listen to droning tunes with a bass that vibrated your scrotum up into your throat only to meet, cajole and meagerly beg glistening women to acquiesce to a request for either contact information (which went nowhere) or if you were really a degenerate a bathroom BJ (not I). The night always ended with you standing on a boulevard with a bewildered look as the stench from cheap meat carts that sizzled their rotting carcasses with GMO peppers and onions assailed your nostrils and turned your stomach even more than you thought humanly possible.

 

So I pivoted. I somehow made a random acquaintance in my social circles who went by the name of Peter. He was a bald aging Jew from the East Coast who seemed to know everybody in LA. A former A&R guy of a major label he had plenty of connections…especially when it came to Art Galleries; and that’s where I went out at night for a spell: Art Galleries. Gallery openings. They were free. They had free drinks and sometimes food and you could walk around and actually talk to people and hear the conversation while referring to…art! Hey waddya think of that. Hmm, that’s interesting. You’re at an Art Gallery. You’re refined. You’re cultured. You’re horny but…you’re not desperate. I met scads of lunatics and eccentric yahoos. I met lots of Lesbians for some reason (I always wondered if that was a standard form of rejection in galleries, seems like it). I met enormous amounts of women who politely let me down unlike the psychopaths in the clubs who would break a bottle in half and have it at my throat for not reading their mind that they were dating Matthew Perry at the moment.

 

What does any of this have to do with this comic book??? Well, when I saw the cover of this comic it immediately flashed me back to my Art Galleryville days. There was something about this Artist, Matt Lesniewski, that jogged my brain, whirred my hard drive and brought me back to some warehouse in Culver City filled with carpet munchers, old farts, intelligentsia and horny nerds. The art just screamed Art Gallery Art Stuff, just the style. Nothing wrong with it but clearly Mind MGMT went in a different direction with the Artist for Issue #2, a clear departure from the standard style that defined their spectacular run. Now, due to the fact this is a limited series I’m left wondering if there’ll be a different artist for the next few issues as well.

 

It was weird, when I got my pull I saw this cover and said ‘What the hell is this’, it took me a few moments to realize what it was which then made me think that the Eraser had specifically pulled this comic just for me. It was an invitation to Zanzibar! Look at that Cat on the cover with the hypnotizing eyes. My mind went: Cat/Pussy/Want/Cant Have/Lesbian/Dammit/Free Food? Or maybe they wanted to activate my ‘horny for a pseudo lesbian’ programming which would activate a Lesbian that was in my gym who would then in turn go to Zanzibar! Or maybe I just pulled the damn thing instinctively because it was Mind MGMT and didn’t bother to look at the cover.

 

Well, I will say this, I think they jumped too far ahead in this issue. First issue this guy’s getting recruited and now he’s already found not one but two of his desired targets. One was debriefed over a hookah and the was other found hanging and debriefed by a tree after being cut down. Before you know it they’re already being attacked before we cut to a huuuge character that’s brought back from the original series. It all looks great. It’s all wonderfully written. But it feels a bit rushed. I think they’d pace this out over a number of issues in the previous series but now I feel like they’re mushing everything in because it’s a limited series. Why is this a limited series? Why is everything a limited series? Are all comic book creators and publishers serial daters? Is there no room for long term comic book relationships anymore? Why not just reboot Mind MGMT into an ongoing series? As I look at Meru and the Eraser facing off in the last panel I realize for the first time that they both must be Lesbians and that since I can’t have them it’s for the best this series ends as quickly as possible. Knowing Mind MGMT that’s exactly what they want me to think. Dammit. Excuse me while I go out into LA and look for some free food in a warehouse, just got the urge for some reason.

 

Rating: 8.3

Verdict: Pull