RED ZONE #1 - Review

 

I’ve been flailing about the comic book solicitations like a thirsty dater who just paid for a premium membership in a second rate dating app; I’m just wanting something, anything to be worth my time. I’m looking at you OkCupid. Yeesh, what a disaster that site is. You’re just scrolling through trolls and old maids until you find a couple of cuties that match but never respond. Just like any other app you either delete or decide that you’re going to take your dating life by the horns and upgrade your membership, woo hoo! You convince yourself, hey you gotta spend money to make money which means you gotta spend money to date honeys! That, my friends, is a maxim that one should neverrrr believe in.

 

See, once you upgrade now you’ve got skin in the game so you have to find dates to justify your investment. It doesn’t matter if it’s only 20 or 30 bux, who in their right mind would pay for something and not get anything??? Even a sociopathic degenerate gambler gets the thrill of that moment when they could win all their losses back. You don’t even get that on a derelict dating app, you get an hourglass where the sand is sifting through to the bottom at ten times the speed of normal. Eventually you will match and you will chat with someone who seems cool enough and after oodles and noodles of your time plying and prying this ‘ehhh, she’s okay, she seems cute’ kinda girl you’ll meet up with her only to wonder ‘Wait, when the hell were these pictures of her taken that she’s got on her profile ,1992???’. At that point you’ll look at the menu and pray to the Dating Gods that she does not choose the 36oz Egyptian tomb aged steak with duck confit and roe from a salmon that could play chess.

 

You know, single men and women ten to twenty years from now are going to look back on all those who did the dating app thing and they’re going to think of the dating app trend in the same way that we look at doctors who thought putting leeches on a sick person to suck out the bad blood was a good idea.

 

So, as my pull list dwindles and dwindles due to the considerable plop plop of drivel that the comic book industry seems to be mired in, I’m just sending likes to new offerings that I may not necessarily have sent in previous years as a means to and end of hopefully finding a hidden gem. I’m not a big fan of Cullen Bunn. His name sounds like a name that the French were going to give to a pastry until they decided not to:

 

‘Let’s call this thees Le Cullen Bunn’

 

‘Mais non, c’est ordinaire. We shall call eet, Le Croissant!’

 

‘Ahhh, Le Croissant, oui! C’est magnifique!

 

And the Cullen Bunn was never to be heard of again until a descendant of this aborted pastry starting dropping middling horror series for brain addled comic book fans. Bad Bunny Bunn also had a run on Marvel’s recent ‘Conan the Barbarian’ catastrophe that rankles me to no end. I don’t get the fascination with this guy but hey, lots of people are fascinated by ordinary these days. SI saw that he was tasked to write this Indie Russian Spy type tale and I was intrigued. I’m always down for a good spy thingamajig and since I’m flailing for adds to my pulls I gave this a shot. Well, oy vey. Oy to the emm oh eff oh vey.

 

I’m going to take apart this story right now so if you want to read this comic don’t keep reading. In other words, spoiler alert although I would say these pages have already been spoiled. First, the art by Mike Deodato Jr. was fantastic, let’s just get that out of the way. Mike, you’re amazing, per usual. Okay, so some old Russian Teacher Dude at a College is approached by some young blonde Army Dude who swiftly convinces him to join their ‘extraction team’ to get his former Russian flame babe out of Russia on an extraction mission. He meets the team and they’re all straight out of a Call of Duty game. They go to Russia, all the special op bad ass dudes post up all around this restaurant where Teacher Dude’s Russian Babe is waiting at a table. They meet and she goes ‘Oh, you’re not just taking me you’re taking my hot daughter as well’. Hot daughter in a skimpy dress and six inch heels walks up like she’s meeting her new sugar daddy, there’s zero tension or stakes for what supposedly is a dangerous mission.

 

All of a sudden all hell breaks loose! The Russians! The Evil Russians! They blow everything up! Oh those dastardly Russians! Rat a Tat Tat Tat! Oh no! They killed the Call of Doody Dudes! All of them! In like one fell swoop, well, that was easy. Old Momma Russia Flame pulls out a Gat (I wish people would keep using this slang term that was popularized by Old School Hip Hoppers back in the day, it’s my fave) she pulls out the Jammy (I love that one too, c’mon, a Jammy??? Wuttttt!) pulls out the Jammy and lets it fly. Now scruffy old Rusky Teach and his Hot Babe in Heels are on the run.

 

Yeesh, ya think Cruller Bunns watched Indiana Jones before writing this. Should we change the title of this to Indiana Jonesanovich and the Babushka? Are you frikkin kidding me with this Honey Buns??? So let me get this straight. You got a special ops bad ass group of Army dudes who have to extract some old Russian chick. Rather than contacting her themselves and meeting her in a, oh I dunno, a garage, an apartment, a Dunkin Donutsky, they drag some old dude with them ‘cause she requests it and they meet in a nice restaurant. They couldn’t meet in a garage, apartment or at a Dunkin Donutsky and get a Cruller Bunn together??? Not only that, her hot daughter wants out too, so she dresses like she’s auditioning for Moscow’s Housewives or The Bachelorusky for her extraction. Let me guess, while she was deciding which outfit showed her tits off better she was on TikTok telling the CCP and her millions of fans about her Hawt X-Tract.

 

Look here Pullen Ho Doughnuts, if you wanted a half naked chick running around Russia with an old Lolita Express Teacher and gun just cut to the chase and have them running from the restaurant; lose all the exposition. Clearly that was your pitch: Russian Club Chick from the 90s and Indiana Jonesanovich. Gee, lemme guess, Indianov is great with guns and has a few tricks up his sleeves and down his pants and he makes it out alive while killing all the evil Russians, eff you dude and your lame plot.

 

Lemme guess, you and Axel Axelrod Foley the EIC of AWA have the Ukrainian Flag in your profile pic and jerk off to Zelensky like he’s a Farrah Fawcett poster from 1977. Axel Foley in his little spiel at the end of the comic even goes so far to compare Putin to Drago from the Rocky IV movie. Oh fer goodness sake. Is that it, you watch the lametsream news and believe all the BS that spews from the pathological liars that call themselves newscasters and now you’re all ‘Russia is Evil and Sucks?’ I know that the war over there is waaaay more complicated and more nuanced than the pathetically reductive lens of  good vs evil. Anyone with a brain who understands history and who objectively considers the myriad of implications and levers that have caused this conflict understands how complex this situation is. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that Culler Bunn and Ahmed Foley don’t know jack about jack. So you can keep your canned plot and myopic simplistic world view off my golden pull list that only allows intelligent beautiful geniuses on it.

 

This comic is not in the Red Zone. It’s sitting on a tee at the 35 yard line and it should just be kicked off into the stands rather than into the endzone. Blecchh. What a waste. Man, all this talk of pastries has me hungry. I’m gonna go grab a Russian Bear Claw from the KGB-odega up the street.

 

Rating: 4.4

Verdict: Drop

PHANTOM ROAD #1 - Review

 

Hmm, well, okay, that was interesting… and quick! Seems like I got through the issue in less than 5 minutes. That’s all you need if you’re Jeff Lemire. That’s probably written on his ‘Comic Book Titan of the Industry’ laminated business card: Give me five minutes and I’ll sell you a 5-6 issue mini-series like I’m a Michelin Star Rated Taco Truck on the Santa Monica Pier.

 

I bet you Jeff Lemire just pops out comic book premises like he’s coming up with random wacky recipes on a Food Network Chef Competition Show. He could be sitting in traffic as the third car in the left lane waiting to make a left turn in LA Rush Hour traffic and he could come up with two alien abduction story lines, an Incan Murder Mystery set in an underground city and a tearjerker about a dog who can fly that finds his long lost owner on an island and then defeats the Chinese Communist Party with his owner by using their laser eyes…and still make the left turn even though he was third.

 

That’s when you know you’re a real driver and someone who doesn’t take shit in your life, when you’re third and you still insist on making that left. You can tell a lot about someone on how they take left turns. If a woman is third and takes a left turn and she’s third, you got a winner. If a woman is fourth and still takes a left turn get out of the car and run the moment you come to a complete stop. Also, if a woman is second and doesn’t take the light when it’s clear that she could have made it get out of the car right then and there and use the crosswalk to escape from her mind boggling life decisions that are waiting to haunt you and your blooming relationship of fire and brimstone.

 

Anyway, Jeff you’ve hooked me again you bastard! With something so simple and so easily laid out; it’s a master class in the simplicity of a plot device grabbing a reader’s attention. Yeah, anyone could have come up with this plot device, it’s not like he’s reinventing literature with it. But it’s the execution and the way it makes you furrow your brow and go ‘hmm, what the hell is that, that was weird, hmm’ as you think about it at random moments of your day.

 

Like you’ll be on a date and your eyes will wander and the babbling insecure actress in front of you with the three pounds of make-up that attempts to cover up her pockmarked skin will ask ‘Hey, where did you just go?’ If you’re interested in her you’ll say ‘Ah, your story of being robbed at the WeHo Whole Foods by a naked homeless person in the prepared foods aisle made me think of a time in my life when I felt helpless and violated’. If you’re not interested in her you’ll say ‘Yeah, this new Jeff Lemire book has me fucking hooked and spooked, like for realzy’.

 

I’m not even going to reveal the premise of the basic mechanics of the plot and the world he’s created here. All I will say is that there’s this thing, some object, in the middle of a highway that you’re going to spend your disposable income on in order to find out what it is. If you purchase this comic you’re going to be at the mercy of Jeffy M for as long as he wants to drain you of 4 bux a month. It’s not like you’ll be able to cancel halfway like you’re cancelling a Peacock TV subscription (my goodness I don’t remember signing up for $5 a month with them and my goodness they make it unbelievable hard to navigate to the page where you can cancel your phantom subscription), no, this book will automatically be added to your pull list as if AI had taken over your local comic book shop; which it probably has at this point.

 

Look, this isn’t a world breaker or a game changer of the industry type of comic. It’s a drop from a dude who’s on a roll unlike any other writer in the Comic Book Universe right now. So don’t even question why, just get it and let Jizzle LeMizzle do whatever the hell he wants to do with the part of your comic book brain until he’s had enough and the ideas that he came up with while waiting for ten minutes outside of his hot yoga class with his gaia yoga mat in hand  make it onto your pull list.

 

Rating: 7.9

Verdict: Pull

February '23 Reading Round Up

 

It's raining uhhhgain tonight in La La Land. Unbelievable. It says this is the last one for a while but my goodness it's been a muddy floody soak fest here. I saw a funny post by someone where it said something to the effect that he's paying SoCal rent prices for SoCal weather not Midwest winter weather, amen brotha, amen. It does make for cozy comic reading and this month was a lot of hit or miss. Here's a couple that won't be getting yanked by me anymore:

Once Upon at the End of the World has become a "Once Again I’m Dropping a Boom Book". My goodness this series turned to drivel with a quickness after such a promising first issue. I don’t think Jason Aaron has a grasp on what the tone of his story is: gruesome, cutesy, rugged, dark, violent, coming of age, terrifying, apocalyptic. Yeah, all these elements don’t really work well together, it’s a jumbo gumbo of no yumbo. Also, the love that is supposedly burgeoning between our two main characters seems placed in the wrong story. That and I just took in a few panels of rats devouring a kid and his dog which was followed up by these wackos in gas masks carrying some elderly chick in a veil in a palanquin who then skinned the puppy for its pelt. Yeah, I’m done. Also, the whole logistics of this pre pubescent weak teen carrying a back pack three times his height filled with scads of electronics and doo dads while casually walking through miles and miles of seared garbage earth rankles the very core of my ‘that shit is not feasible nor possible’ sensibility. Buh bye.

 

The third installment of Kroma was a sight to behold. Lorenzo De Felici drew the hell out of this issue and the color palettes are beautiful. The story also became more focused after it muddled through the second issue. One issue left in this mini-series (isn’t everything these days technically a mini series?) and I’m really looking forward to it. Old Dog by Declan Salvey has gotten…mnyeh. It looks astounding but the story is a little rag tag. It's basically just an old dad running around with his daughter killing people with no real threat to their lives. There’s an intel outfit called ‘The Black Circle’ which is whatever whatever. Next issue doesn’t come out until May so we’ll see where I’m at but right now I’m letting that Old Dog Beat drrrropppp!

 

Here's what I got into this past month:

 

It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth (TP) 

Chicken Devils #2

Monstress #42

 

Saga #61 

Black Cloak #1

Parker Girls #3-4

 

Avengers: War Across Time #1 

Spy Superb #1

I only pulled eleven comics in February! That's my lowest pull since there were no comics at all back in April and May of 2020 and my lowest pull of an actual month since 2011; that's 12 years ago! March has a bunch of new #1s coming out including a Jeff Lemire offering and another Scott Snyder 3 issue drop which I hate to admit looks really good. I want to love more of you Comic Book Universe, let's get back on the horse and pop out the genius! Anyway, I've gotta do a bunch of stretches before I get in my rowboat to go to the gym. If I don't my shoulders get sore and I've got to whack at least a dozen homeless zombies on the way there which takes a lot of energy.

Happy Reading!

IT'S LONELY AT THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH - Review

 

As my pull list dwindles due to the continuous onslaught of less than palatable monthly offerings by the comic book industry these days I’ve been forced to expand my view into the trade market with the hopes that I can find suitable enough replacements for my sequential art and text bubbles fix. I’ve been grabbing those ‘Reckless’ books by Brubaker and Phillips which have predictably been fucking fantastic. If you haven’t checked out their ‘Reckless’ trade series yet get thee to thy LCS and grab them all with a quickness you ninnies. I still wish they’d be dropping monthlies rather than only dropping trades but I’ll take them anyway they give them. If Brubaker and Phillips started an old timey comic strip in a newspaper I’d inhale those too.

 

It’s an interesting debate, why not just purchase trades rather than monthlies? Well, trades are a full blown relationship while monthlies are like dating. I can take a monthly out for a spin or two and ghost them without fair warning. A monthly could make a great first impression and then fall off a cliff on their second go round to which you must assume the monthly has revealed its true colors and must be punished by the absence of your interest. A trade is like meeting someone at a wedding in a resort or on a cruise and then hooking up with them. You’re not really going to be able to avoid them should things turn psycho. Like if you wake up in the morning after a night bang and she’s naked on the floor in the middle of a pentagram drawn with Coppertone tanning lotion and she asks you to help her sacrifice the turkey bacon from your room service breakfast as an offering to Moloch, that’s pretty much your girl until you get on your flight back home; enjoy!

 

At any rate, I blindly grabbed this ‘Center of the Earth’ book due to its critical darling status to see what all the hubbub was about. Well, bottom line, it deserves all the hubbub and a little bit of hullabaloo with a dash of brouhaha. Zoe Thorogood is a revelation and this book may very well be her ‘Baby I’m a Star’ moment into the world of comicdom. Oddly enough, it’s not the kind of book you read as much as it is one that you take in. The descriptive calls it metanarrative which I’m not so sure is accurate. It’s more like a diary written by the id of the mind the angst of the heart and the wisdom of the soul which is quite extraordinary considering the fact that Zoe is not even a quarter of a century old.

 

This very well may be the graphic novel gold standard of what it feels like on the outside and inside to struggle with anxiety and depression through the lens of an evolving artist. The devices that she uses to articulate the various aspects of her personality are the true backbone of the book and as you get to know them you get to know her more. This evolving discovery allows the linear narrative to slowly melt away into this pastiche of awkward emotions and an incessant need to comprehend one’s own inner mechanisms. That may be the trap here, you’re looking for a story when what you should really be looking for is how the pages land on you on a deeper level. The fact that she’s already achieved this nuance at such an early stage of her career is an amazing feat.

 

I totally crush on broken artist babes, something about them, their vulnerability, their passion, their need to overcome despite their illogical approaches; it’s so deeply human and magical. I probably would end up in the friend zone with Zoe which would be totally fine with me; not like she frikkin’ cares but there’s a familiarity here that’s strangely comforting for me and perhaps for so many of us who have boldly taken up the path of being a creative being in this wacky world.

 

Being an artist is tough. Being a writer is tough. Being anything creative that forces you to find that elusive muted solitude to expand and mine oneself for a flow of art that seems to come from the prick of pin inside of you is as taxing and as rewarding as anything you could possibly imagine. I like to think of it as a ‘Selfless Selfishness’. You have to be maniacally obsessed with yourself while connecting to a wider consciousness at the same time. I get Zoe’s predicament. All I can say to her or to anybody who may be going through the throes of these anxious artistic developments is that if you can somehow find a way to detach yourself where you become the observer of your emotions and your process rather than the reaction of them, you’ll find your way home. Whether she knows it or not that’s what Zoe was doing with this book.

 

Zoe laments the terms ‘The Future of Comics’ and 'Relatable' that apparently made its way to her at a point in her career. I would say that she’s not necessarily the future of comics but rather a part of  the future of comics. As for relatable, I'd replace that with 'connective' as her art truly connected and resonated with many who have experienced similar hurdles in their lives. Her heroic work here is a triumph and while it’s certainly reasonable to assume that she may stumble along as she unravels more and more about herself and her creative process I think it’s safe to say that if she stays the course we’ll be looking back on this book as the one that launched it all many many years from now. To all the loners out there at the center of your worlds, you’re not alone. We’re all alone in this journey together. 

 

Rating: 9.5

CHICKEN DEVILS #2 - Review

It’s fuh-reezing here in LA. Yeah, yeah I don’t wanna hear from you bozos where it’s snowing and negative etcetera degrees. You signed up for that shit. You secretly enjoy it as it you mutter in smoky exhales of sub zero breath that it ‘builds your character’ as the cold freezes your face that’s forgone the use of skin care products for the past decade plus. You revel in the combative elements of a rough winter as you feel it steels your soul and your resolve to face not only the gusty winds outside of your doors but the winds that whip your thoughts of a better life in a frenzy. ‘Ha Ha!’ you guffaw lustily to the Freeze Meister, those pansy ass Angelenos wouldn’t last a lick in these frigid climes; what a bunch of pussies. You would be correct in that assertion. I wouldn’t last because I wouldn’t be there in the first place.

 

See I opted for 70 in January with the option of a scarf should it dip down to 65 at night. I traded in my snow shovel for a blue corn chip shoveling freshly made guac in between my moistened un-chapped lips. I traded in my space heater for a hummingbird feeder. I traded in my ‘You survived the elements’ badge of honor for ‘You found a parking spot at the Whole Foods in Weho between 1-2pm’ badge of honor. While you’re scraping ice off of your car I’m sitting on my steps in 77 degree weather with my hand down my loose sweatpants fondling my balls as I yell to my doggie to stop shitting on the neighbors freshly manicured lawn that has sprinklers running 24/7. What I did not sign up for is blizzard warnings, 45 degrees at noon and the possibility of flash floods over the weekend. But that’s what we’re getting.

 

What all this means is that after a hearty week of maniacally running around this expansive sprawl I finally have time to nestle in and catch up on some reading and what better comic to dive back in first with than a title from my Top 10 of 2022: Chicken Devil. Well, now it’s called Chicken Devils although it should just be Chicken Devil #6 but you know the drill, look at this fresh new #1 issue we have for this hot new series, oooh. Can you imagine if Stan Lee back in the 60s was bit by this ridiculous idea that ‘people buying comics only want #1 issues’ We’d have a gazillion stops and starts of amazing story lines from the great Marvel Heroes. It would be impossible to develop their mythos amidst such insanity and yet here we are dropping #1 issues like Taylor Swift drops corny AF commercial spots every 15 minutes.

 

Anyway, the story has pivoted to where the cops, who were tracking down the mob murders of our Hot Chicken Makin’ Russian Gang Bakin’ Hero, are now teamed up with the reluctant Chicken Man to go full out vigilante and eradicate the Gangs of LA. This is all well and good if there were actual gangs in LA that were wreaking havoc everywhere you looked. Fact of the matter is it’s not the 90s anymore where the color of your shirt can get you offed, now LA is basically run by the Mob or The Cartel so all the rival biker gangs or ethnic scummy gangs depicted in this book really aren’t a thing; but they make for a fun chicken wing a ding ding.

 

The best part of the issue is when the cops and the Chicken go to ‘Haute Yoga’ to take out two rival gangs that are using the space as a meetup. First of all, I would love to go to a yoga studio called Haute Yoga! Where is it? Dude, you guys not only need to make a pop-up for this Chicken Spot in this comic but a Haute Yoga spot as well. I feel like Yoga Studios in LA have gotten grungier and less bougie. People are now just wandering in as if they woke up from a nap or are about to crawl into bed after a long day. Used to be you got, well women got, a little dressed up for a yoga class. There’d be cute little yoga outfits and accoutrements and cute little yoga hair ties and yoga footwear. Even the yoga mats were all sexily patterned or they’d have psychedelic kombucha recipes written on the mat in Sanskrit. So yeah, hook that up Aftershock.

 

Look, this comic isn’t breaking down walls or transforming the industry but as stated before, the tone and execution is being masterfully crafted by Bucellatto and company. It’s wacky and yet somehow grounded at the same time which is a tough feat to accomplish. If I could place a bet in Vegas on which current comic will make it first to a streaming platform I would say this one. It already takes place in LA, the locations are easy peasy and the casting is diverse enough to satisfy the pokiest of the wokiest.

 

I mean, it would be nice if I could just binge the first season of Chicken Devil right now since I’m clearly going nowhere this weekend due to all that wet stuffy chill thing that’s happening outside. What do you nimrods who enjoy shoveling snow while your nuts climb into your rectum to stay warm call it? Wehhh, something, wehh dirt, no, wehh, umm oh, Weather! Yeah, fuck that weather thing, please take back your ‘character’ and leave me and my pussified blood alone.

 

Rating: 8.5

Verdict: Pull

MONSTRESS #42 - Review

 

I’m lost. I have no idea what the hell is going on in this wackadoodle book anymore. Look, you can take your little six month hiatus if you want to but it doesn’t mean it’s gonna work. It works for Saga, they have a clear story line. I can flip through their previous issue on my comic rack and within seconds go ‘Oh yeah, that’s where they left off’. I’m flipping through issue 41 of this jumblethon and my head is spinning. Liu! WTF? This ain’t a novel it’s a comic book. You’re not Ursula K. Le Guin or Piers Anthony mmkay? You’ve got a bazillion different story lines, plot devices, character arcs, mythologies and locales and I officially cannot keep up anymore.

 

There’s the Dusk Court, Evening Court, Midday Bangeroo Court, The Welcome 2 The Dawn Purple Court and probably Rucker Park and all these courts are run by God knows who and they’re all drawn with intricately detailed armor by the wonderful Sana Takeda so whomever is leading them is hard to make out half the time. Everyone betrays everyone. The foxes are being hunted by the, I don’t know anymore, Matt Fraction on acid? There’s Goths and Lesbo Loving and a Dad who hires an anthropomorphic cast of Sea Pirates. The Anime Fox is now traveling in the dreamworld to rescue the main character while she’s being swallowed whole in the real world on a lab table by a snake that James Earl Jones turned into as Thulsa Doom in the Conan the Barbarian movie. Now there’s robots and mechanical arms being welded onto humans and is that Michael Caine in a robe with a glowing orb? Yeesh, he’s in everything.

 

This all comes on the heels of a slew issues that dealt with the war between everybody and nobody. There were pages and pages of military strategy and envoys between Sharks with Dicks and Wolves with Tits who are about to be ambushed by flying pirate cats with swords. It got to the point where I didn’t know who was fighting who and why other than the fact that lots of Lion Headed Dudes and Screechy Witches were angry about it. I’m really starting to think Marjorie Liu takes these hiatuses as a way to keep her series going.

 

 

Image: Hey Marjorie, thanks for coming in. So, we’re thinking we want to wind down this –

 

Marjorie: Oh emm gee, I totally spaced, my flight to Mongolia leaves in an hour not three hours. Yikes! Gotta go! I’m going to be churning butter in a farm two four seven, zero reception. Ta!

 

 

The tragedy in all of this is that this began as an amazing series. Add in the fact that Sana Takeda’s art never fails to amaze or disappoint and it’s hard to want to put this comic in the ‘see ya’ pile. I mean, does Marjorie have an expensive shopping addiction? Is she on Wayfair buying endtables and spice racks all day long? Does she have a Dom in a Dungeon that she goes to who charges her a cigarette on the arm a bruised leg and a thwack to the thighs? Does she need to keep extending this series as long as possible to fund said addictions?

 

The most integral relationship of this series is that of Maika and the ravenous mystical ancient God that lives inside of her. That and how it ties in to Mommy’s blind ambition for power. Everything else is fancy window dressing and the b,c,d,e etc. stories. There was a major revelation that took place in issue 40 but now we’re on the astral plane where anything can happen and I mean anything.

 

Here's why there's no way I can ever give this series up notwithstanding the fact that I've been in the ride since day one so I've dropped about $150 so far trying to keep up: This book is full on straight jacket bonkers but in a good way. Look, the imagination and world building of Monstress has always been off the charts and now in this issue we get the main characters floating on an asteroid made up of the ancient God in a dreamworld where Maika's inner child is there along with her decapitated talking head from the real world. The Anime Fox is there along with the main Cat character as well. All of a sudden a gi-normous Cat Monolith appears in space with a wide burning opening in its stomach and after some trepidation all the characters jump in the burning cat stomach. Dude. 

 

Wasn't there an article that came out that said having a lot of cats around you makes you crazy? Like there's some hormone or toxin they release in the air that affects your mind? I think it's safe to say that Marjorie Liu probably has two to three dozen cats where she lives and they're in essence writing this entire epic tale. They probably let her sleep, have a cup of coffee in the morning and then command her to her laptop where she's taken over by an Abyssinian and a Maine Coon who take turns writing scene descriptives and dialogue. So, I gotta give it up to the cats for the flat out chutzpah and wildly out of this world plot developments they come up with. They must be digging on some serious high potency nip.

There never has been a jumping on point for this book. There also never really has been a jumping off point. There's only been a 'jump through this hoop of insanity and join us on this feline journey where it may not be coherent but it will certainly crawl into your soul'. Damn you Monstress. You're like that crazy lying ballerina chick I used to date who did releves and demi plies while stripping to 'Pour Some Sugar on Me'. Sometimes you gotta stick with the crazy cuz it'd be fucking crazy not to.

 

Rating: 7.4

Verdict: Pull

 

SAGA #61 - Love Letter

It’s Love Day and what better way to celebrate than to pen a love letter to a Comic Book that I absolutely love: Saga! Yay Saga you’re back, aww, I missed you, but, seriously though? Would you stop going away for six months at a time??? Good googamoogah! Like, enough already! Oy vey. This comic is like a temperamental dream girl you’re dating who has to run off to an ashram for half the year to get away from the ills of society. I get that BKV is doing all his Hollyweird stuff and that’s fine but what about Fiona? She’s not on any other books is she? Does she just do this for shits and giggles? I honestly thought Fiona Staples was like some pear shaped English Woman who watches Absolutely Fabulous on VHS all weekend and drinks hot toddies. Turns out I’m completely wrong. Look at her!

 

She’s a cute Canadian babe who looks to be in her mid 20s. Holy crap, she’s mastered the art of comic books already. She’s probably bored. It doesn’t seem like she’s doing anything else these days other than Saga. Is it BKV’s fault? Fiona, do we need to rope him up, drug him and shackle him down in your basement like he was the lead character in that Apple TV Show ‘The Patient’? Amazing show by the way, highly recommend it. Well, look, I’m not that far from Sherman Oaks, like 20 minutes if it’s after traffic and I can take the 10 to the 405. I can scoop him up for you Fiona. I’m sure I can find some Saga Heads dressed as Petrichor in WeHo to help.

 

Oh Fiona. I love your lines. Your palette. The way you draw eyelashes and naughty bits. Fiona Staples’ art in this glorious book is beyond perfect. There are not enough words and superlatives to accurately describe what a joy it is to take in this comic whenever the hell it comes out. It just feels like you’re right there. It feels like the characters are actually moving and feeling the emotions the moment you take them in. The realism. The humanity. Despite the layoff Saga is like a warm cup of cocoa in front of the radiator on a freezing day; it’s one sublime ‘ahhh, that feels good' every, single, time. It never fails to deliver.

 

As for Mr. ‘Y would you wanna be the Last Man’: BKV is a master storyteller and this book is a testament to what comics should be. Remember when comics lasted more than five frikkin issues? He has masterfully spun a riveting tale for sixty plus issues with not one single clunker in the bunch, not one. There’s supposedly only going to be 108 issues in sum total and I bet not a single reader of this book would mind if this series got to Spawn’s 300 issue milestone. I feel like Saga could drop an issue a month into 2050 and beyond. I get that there are gripes and quips about killing off major characters a bit too much but hey, I think one certain HBO Dragon Egg Havin’ show did it quite on the regular and they seemed to be kinda popular.

 

What also sets Saga apart from the bunch is the community and connections it has fostered over the years. The letters column is an entire universe unto itself and the stories, confessions and miracles that have poured onto those pages over the years is unlike any letter column I’ve seen apart from the Sex Criminals letter column (my goodness that comic was brilliant as well). I mean, for goodness sake, someone frikkin’ proposed to someone in this issue’s letter column. Throw in the costume contests and you have a work of art that has leapt through the pages right into the hearts of people’s lives; people who might not even have been inclined to have ever picked up a comic up in the first place.

 

I think we should all consider ourselves grateful that we were alive and kicking while Saga was pumping out, well, more like drizzling out, issues for us to inhale. I think we should consider it a blessing that we don’t know where this story is headed for in the not knowing it brings us right back the second we see another opportunity to find out.

 

My Ex Fiance wasn’t really into comic books. She was a musician. LA Girl. A Sunset Strip Rock n Roller. Into the night life, going out, socializing. I gave her one issue of Saga to check out. She read every Saga that came into my house. ‘Nuff said.

 

Thank you BKV (you’re probably soo annoyed when people call you that) and Ms Fiona for delivering this epic tale to the ones who are smart enough to follow.

 

Rating: 10.0

Verdict: Champ

BLACK CLOAK #1 - Review

Okay. Wow. Well, I’m gonna try to make heads and tails out of this thing and by tails I mean Mermaid Tails. It’s a murder mystery, triple homicide to be exact, so there’s that. We’ve got humans, an ornery Brotha Detective who scowls a lot, elves, and a ton of anthropomorphic characters with no discernable rhyme or reason to their features. Oh, and there’s Mermaids, not like hot Darryl Hannah ‘Splash’ Mermaids but like screeching grey average looking Mermaids. It’s got a bit of magic to it, a bit of lesbo lovin’ in it (par for the course these days) and a bit of royal familial vibes to it.

 

The Detectives on the case are called ‘Black Cloaks’ and somewhat feared by the citizenry; not sure why. They just wear these cloaks. They don’t, as far as the first issue goes, present any physical intimidation to anyone nor do they seem to possess any supernatural abilities. They’re just your average Law & Order Human with an Elf Babe on the hunt for a killer. The main character is a female Elf named Phaedra who apparently was exiled by the Royal Family of Elves for not marrying some Dude Elf who is now dead after being found in a flop house where he was frequenting some hooker Elf. Well, now that sounds like modern London to me, do we have ourselves a Prince Andrew parallel here, hmm?

 

I mean right there I’m kinda sold, we got a frikkin’ fancy elf who likes dem hos. I would think Elves, who usually are all very attractive, wouldn’t necessarily be the hottest bang out of the fantasy bunch. I mean, I have a crush on the Galadriel Babe of the Prime LOTR but she doesn’t strike me as freaky namean? I bet you Dwarves are by far the freakiest, like toys, tools, stones at different angles, pouring mead on buttocks kinda stuff. As for Hobbits, they’d probably giggle a lot and be all ticklish while gnawing on some loaf of bread while tappin’ that ayass. Anyway, the Ho be dead and there’s also a Mermaid who took a bite of her in a lagoon that also washed up dead and ugly AF.

 

The bar where the Elf was tappin’ it had a tank behind the bartender where a melancholic Mermaid swam. This reminded me of, wait, I think it was the Mondrian Hotel on the Sunset Strip that had a long rectangular glass enclosure behind the Front Desk where a different cute hot babe would be in just hanging out. It never failed to make me stop and stare for at least a couple of minutes. Like, how many drugs was the designer or architect on when he got the wackiest idea in Hotel History?

 

Dude, let’s put some chick in a glass case behind the front desk

 

We should put a chick in a glass case on like every floor.

 

Dude, like, outside behind the valet n’ shit.

 

Oh, Dude, room service should come and there should be a chick in a glass case on the bottom of the rolling tray.

 

What if the executive suites had a glass bed where you sleep on top of a bunch of chicks doing their homework?

 

This went on and on into the wee hours of the morning and these two psychopaths finally just had to settle on just chick in a case behind the front desk. These girls would just be in there reading a book or working on a laptop. This was way before social media took off so it wasn’t like they were Tock Ticky Tockying or Insta’ing or Snappy Wappying. I actually knew a girl who had that gig. She said it wasn’t that bad at all, she got breaks, worked on her scenes and lines, handled her emails, decent pay. She wasn’t allowed to make eye contact with customers or do anything lewd but she was in there in like boxer shorts or a skimpy bed get-up. Yeah, that’s way pervy man. I mean how do you explain that to a kid who’s with you?

 

Mommy why is that lady in the glass case?

 

She’s reading sweetheart.

 

Why does she have to read in a glass case?

 

Because it’s where she likes to read.

 

Does she sleep in there?

 

Maybe sometimes honeybunch.

 

Do other people go in there with her?

 

Only Studio Executives after 2am cutie pie.

 

Okay, so this comic has a lot going on. I’m reading a lot of people say ‘This is the New Saga’ or ‘Move over Saga’. Uhh, slow your roll homies. This doesn’t even come close to holding a Mermaid’s grey scrunchy nipple to the majesty that has been Saga. You got randy Elves, a teenager with a smoky purple head that curses and Centaur Bartenders, whoop dee doo. You got a long long way to go before you can even claim that you have anything resembling Saga. Meredith McLaren’s art is lovely If a bit Disneyish. I most certainly appreciate Image Comics dropping three times the page count for only an extra buck; uhh Marvisney are you taking notes you cheap bastards.

 

I’m on board for now. I’m intrigued and grateful that this wild murder mystery tale somehow reminded me of that super cute actress I had a crush on back in the day who spent her nights in a glass case behind a hotel’s front desk. Admit it, next time you check into a hotel you’ll look behind the front desk and wonder ‘Where’s the chick in the case?’.

 

Rating: 8.0

Verdict: Pull

PARKER GIRLS #3 & #4 - Review

I love this cover. I love Katchoo from Terry Moore’s Universe. I would have loved this cover more three years ago. Three years ago this cover is guaranteed sexy. I’m thinking:

 

 ‘Ooh who’s this hot babe with the naughty tat in the heels staring down at a possibly nekkid Katchoo, grrr'.

 

Now I’m thinking:

 

‘Is this a chick in heels or a dude? Or a dude-chick? Is that why we only see the heels cuz Terry didn’t wanna draw the dude-chick? Is this dude or chick nekkid also? Is that his big ass foot in that tiny ass heel and he’s having a moment where he can’t walk? Is Katchoo looking up at his junk? Did he-she just pull out his-her junk? Is the look that Katchoo is giving like ‘is that all you have?’ Did the Dude-Chick just say in a gruff throaty voice ‘Get out the water honey, Tranny Liebowitz only takes dips alone, scram!’

 

Ya can never really know these days can you? Nevertheless this cover still sits front and center on my comic book rack because of its inherent sexiness. What, you don’t have a comic book rack at home to display all your current comics? And you call yourself a comic geek? See, what I’m doing here is I’m avoiding getting to the meat of this comic because frankly it’s canned lunch meat at best. It may even be processed soy/pea protein/chemical meat. Oy, Terry, you’re killing me!

 

I said this in the initial review of 1&2 but it bears repeating: Terry Moore is a master of writing intricate grounded in reality relationship stories. His best work is stuff like ‘Strangers in Paradise’ which is all about relationships, until it gets wonky with the international espionage thriller stuff. He can expand to supernatural and sci-fi as he did in ‘Rachel Rising’ and ‘Echo’ (Echo is probably my all time fave of his, you should check it out if you haven’t) but every time he meanders into this Mission Impossible/Undercover Black Ops Charlie’s Angels stuff it feels like a bad 80s movie that you’d see on Skin-emax back in the 80s at around 1am.

 

Moore is a master cartoonist, there’s no denying that. He also sure knows how to draw the hell out of a Woman and most of his leads are basically all female. So I get the lure for wanting to focus on this Super Spy Agent Bad Ass group of chicks. It just lacks stakes. These girls can do no wrong and they get away with everything. They’re all super strong, super smart, they literally get away with murder. I don’t know if this is some fetish fantasy of Terry’s where he envisions these babes putting the world right but knowing what I know of intelligence agencies, black ops and brutal off the books missions I think it’s safe to say these girls are complete and utter amateurs. It’s 2023. Cameras are everrrrrywhere. These chicks just waltz in and out of places, plunge their heels in UFC dudes and just waltz out like there’ll be no repercussions. I don’t buy it.

 

The premise of this story has also gotten officially wonky. So there’s a murder mystery of some billionaire’s wife found in the Pacific Ocean that’s running along these Parker Girls (every time I hear that phrase I think of Parker Brothers the game company. Who’s up for a game of Sorry!) cornering this billionaire into somehow giving up his interest in some water project that’s going to stop the drought in California. Oy frikkin vey. Katchoo’s Meathead Roller Derby Sister convinces Katchoo to act like a ho again and seduce the billionaire to convince him to give up the company. Katchoo finds him at an event and does the Sharon Stone ‘ooh I’m wearing no panties look up my dress’ bit. I will admit, I’ve been on a few dates and had that moment where I realize there’s no panties on. It totally shorts your circuits for like ten seconds and there’s a lot umm, uhhs right after

 

I’m not sure who I’m supposed to root for in this book: these awful crass women who act with impunity, an innocent cute bystander roped into slut duty or a robotic billionaire with zero personality. I checked out the solicits and, yeah, this story is going nowhere fast. Terry, I love your stuff, I will 100% jump onto whatever your next project is but, Sorry! Drrrop! More hot pool covers though and pan up, cuz, you know, we have no idea what’s doing up there these days.

 

Rating: 5.7

Verdict: Drop

THE AVENGERS: WAR ACROSS TIME #1 - Review

There used to be this comic book shop on the corner of Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue in New York that I used to frequent in the 90s. It was a gold mine. You’d walk up these creaky stairs from the street into this dimly lit low ceilinged room that smelled of a dusty attic that hadn’t been entered in years. There were no fancy toys or pricy bagged and boarded comics pristinely displayed on the wall. It was just a largish room with rows and rows of long boxes on tables. You could mistake the table with the cash register as just another one of those tables although it seemed as if new long boxes would magically appear from underneath that table as if there was a portal to a garage in Queens filled with ancient comic books.

 

A nondescript guy of medium build with curly ginger hair ran the place. He never wore fan boy gear or anything flashy; it was always a fuzzy bland sweater in the winter and a simple mono-toned t-shirt in the summer. You could tell he just got up out of bed, threw on whatever was on the floor, hit the subway, grabbed a coffee and egg on a bagel from across the street and trudged up the stairs every day. He always seemed to have an air of contentedness about him, as if he was exactly where he wanted to be. Ah, yes, the gold mine. Those long boxes were filled with copious amounts of moderately priced silver and golden age comics from every title you could dream of. You could fish in your pocket for a crumpled up ten-dollar bill and get away with a couple if you were lucky.

 

Many of the books weren’t mint or near mint, there were a lot of crinkled corners, smudges, missing staples, but it didn’t matter back then. You were getting a Hulk #179 for six bucks, a Tales of Suspense featuring the Submariner for, oh, I dunno, 13 bucks, a classic FF versus Doom for five smackers. He always made deals for you at the cash counter, especially if he recognized you. There was no eBay, no Craigslist. A ‘Comic Book Price Guide’ was available but hardly ever checked. Jeez, is there anything worse than shopping a store or even worse than worse perusing comics at a garage sale where there aren’t any prices on the books and you get to the cashier and he just checks the Price Guide to charge you the ‘appropriate price’. Dude, screw you, you’re not The Forbidden Planet on Broadway you’re some random geek who needs money to pay for rent.

 

Anyway, some of the great gems of my collection came from that very store. It’s not there anymore. Hard to say when it closed up since I left New York in 2000. I bring all this up because ‘Avengers: War Across Time’ reminds me of the types of books I would dive into when I went to this store. The story? Kang wants to take over the world by sending Robotic Versions of the Marvel Universe to defeat the Heroes. In this one he sends a Robotic Hulk. Sigh, gives me all the feels.

 

Marvel was simpler back then. No ‘Mega Crossover Events’ no ‘MCU Tie-Ins’ just criminals and psychedelic wacky rulers from another part of the Universe who wanted to take over Earth. It was up to radioactive Heroes in Tights to save us. That’s one thing about Marvel that always amused me, most of their Heroes gain their super powers from radiation: Spidey, The FF, The Hulk. I’m pretty sure radiation would kill these people if we really got into it. Daredevil got his super power from a radioactive chemical blinding his eyes. Yeah, that dude is blind and lucky if he lives. He doesn’t get super powers. Perhaps it was just Stan Lee reconciling a world of Nuclear Bombs and Radiation and wanting to transmute that dangerous power into something heroic.

 

 

Oh, and look at the guy who wrote this thing! Paul Levitz, what a mensch! He apparently was the head honcho of DC from 2002-2009. From what I can tell he hasn’t done ske-wat in comic books since then. I bet a couple of Demons from Marvel were bickering at each other in Katz’s deli over the need to go retro to balance out all the crappy new stuff they’ve been putting out. Maybe one just lamented:

 

Demon One:  If only we could have someone write an old school Silver Age Avengers tale that didn’t suck we could satisfy Beelzebub’s yin for that feel for a 60s book while targeting the old comic dude market

 

Paul puts down his Corned Beef sandwich and chirps.

 

Paul: I could do that, easy peasy.

 

The Demons look at Paul. One walks over and pats his shoulder.

 

Demon Two: I bet you could pal. I bet you could.

 

While distracted by one demon the other sprinkles a powder in Paul’s Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray soda.

 

I’m pretty sure that’s what happened. So poor Paul is tied up right now in a windowless room in Midtown with a Sylvania Typewriter pumping out these issues. I hope they let him go when the run is over. Who knows, they might extract his brain and give it to C.B. Cebulski who’ll put it behind his desk with the other brains that he siphons off original ideas from. Of course they had to release this book now what with an Antman/Wasp movie coming out where Kang, who is as handsome as Denzel in his prime now and purrs his lines like Billy Dee Williams, is the villain.

 

This book still gives me all the feels of the 14^th Street and 6^th Avenue days. I hope that the guy who ran that shop is somewhere having a garage sale today where I’m sure a kid with eyes as wide as the moon is rifling through one of his long boxes. That kid’s about to get the comic book deal and steal of his life. Enjoy it kid. It’s rough out here in a world full of Price Guides Comic Book Shops and Marketing Schmucks. Keep it real and enjoy that story. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore. Well, Paul Levitz makes 'em, on borrowed time.

 

Rating: 8.5

Verdict: Pull