Miracleman: The Silver Age #7 - Deleted Scene

 

Are these two about to punch each other or about to kiss each other on the cover? Hard to say, but whatever it is MiracleMan has finally come to an end! Well, not really, but, at least this ‘Age’ is over. It was a – well, a decent but not stupendous finale to what ended up boiling down to a disagreement over a smoocheroo that came out of the blue. This run of 7 issues had its ups and downs for sure. Some moments popped, some dropped and some just elicited a copious amount of eye rolls.

 

Sure it’s still one of the greatest comic book concepts in the history of comic books. However, it’s as if the Beatles were working on their final album and then handed it off to someone else, perhaps Dylan or Elton or even the Stones, perish the thought. No matter what they would have done with it, it never would have been as great; just different. So perhaps we should have expected different but not great from the great Neil Gaiman.

 

Anyway, guess what I got my hands on??? A scene that was cut from the final issue of the Silver Age. Don’t ask me how I got it, it wasn’t easy. Every time I walked into Whole Foods I kept hearing everyone murmuring about this “insane” deleted scene from MM that’s been circulating on the dark web. Some have apparently seen it on the periphery of their Apple Vision Pro experiences; always out of reach. Well, after a lot of nasty business I’m going to present it to you in all its glory. Don’t ever tell me I don’t do right by you guys.

 

It takes place right after this page when MM flies to Jordan to meet Dicky.

 

 

Dicky slithers around the corner of the mountain and puts his hands on his hips.

 

Dicky: You’re a tart

 

MM: A what?

 

Dicky: Tart, as in a whore, you’re a Miraculous Tart.

 

MM: Dicky -

 

Dicky: Don’t call me that, your little tart nickname of me.

 

MM: I don’t -

 

Dicky: What’s my real name? Neville? Earnest? Oswald?

 

MM: It’s always been Dicky

 

Dicky: Yes it’s always been your little cock fantasy hasn’t it. What did you do? Get together with Gargunza the Troll to create a tidy man-hole to play with to satisfy your wicked perversions

 

MM: I did nothing of the sort.

 

Dicky: Lying little bitch.

 

MM: You’re part of the Pantheon. You’re -

 

Dicky: I’m part of your little wet hole brothel in the sky! What, you think you dress us up in fancy Miracle garb it makes us anything else other than a sucky fucky whenever you want us.

 

MM: Dauntless –

 

Dicky: Couldn’t just subsist on your Tart-Theon you had to plant one on me eh?

 

MM: I care for you Dicky

 

Dicky: You’re a bored old perv who can have and have had anybody you’ve ever wanted. I was just another notch on your Man Pussy belt.

 

MM: My Man what?

 

Dicky: Your Naughty Bits Abacus!

 

MM: Let me ask the Qys if that’s some of their tech.

 

Dicky: [tearing up] This would never have happened if your Twat Spigot of a Wife with her 80s Power Bitch Haircut never suggested you snog me.

 

MM: It’s been in me since the dawn of time, I lo –

 

[Dicky transforms into Leslie Jones and Miracle Man transforms into Steven Yeun with Tits.]

 

Dicky: What the actual shit?

 

MM: Oh, bloody hell.

 

Dicky: Is this some joke? You’re about to profess your love to me and you turn into a diminutive Asian man with big knockers?!?

 

MM: It’s Neil.

 

Dicky: Neil?

 

MM: Yes, our Authoritarian Author. He’s decided to be more inclusive and diverse for this moment. Look at yourself.

 

Dicky: What the fuck is this shit? Oh hell fucking no.

 

MM: Yes, he’s prone to these whimsical casting alterations from time to time.

 

Dicky: You tell that –

 

MM: You tell him, I’m more than spent from wheezing to the heavens at him

 

Dicky: [wails to the sky] Look motherfucker, change my ass back or I’m a bust your Gremlin looking fizzace with a quickness.

 

MM: Look at your purple haired girlfriend.

 

Dicky turns to see Meta now transformed into a Handicapped Native American Little Person.

 

Meta: I’m glad you no longer look like Colonizers.

 

Beat

 

Dicky: He did the same shit for his dumb ass Sandman series on Netflix.

 

MM: Yes, he most certainly did.

 

Dicky: That show sucked.

 

MM: I would tend to agree with you.

 

Dicky: Why did he cast Meshell Ndegeocello as Lucien? Amazing musician -

 

MM: Yes I love her work dearly

 

Dicky: Can’t act for shit.

 

MM: There were – many questionable moves.

 

Dicky: That show was drivel.

 

MM: Quite drivelous.

 

Dicky: Driveltastic.

 

MM: The driveliest for sure.

 

Dicky: You’re not allowed to fuck up Sandman.

 

MM: Seems like he did.

 

Dicky: And now he’s fucking us up.

 

MM: I wouldn’t necessarily call it a fuck-up, per se –

 

Dicky: What would you call it??

 

MM: The Miraculous Smooch he always wanted to see.

 

Dicky: Look at us now though, it’s fucking ridiculous

 

MM: It leans into the theater of absurd.

 

Dicky: You are very cute though. You in your Male Asian actor of the moment suit.

 

MM: Yes well –

 

Dicky/Leslie moves in to kiss MM/Steven. MM backs away and holds up his hand.

 

Dicky: What are you doing?

 

MM: What are you doing?

 

Dicky: I’m giving you what you wanted, your Dicky smooch, and maybe more, take your – Christ, where the hell is the zipper on this suit

 

MM: Dicky, please, I’m not really feeling -

 

Dicky: You don’t want to kiss me! You racist!

 

MM: I’m not a racist, please.

 

Dicky: You most certainly are! Oh, you wanted to kiss me as a shiny blonde alabaster boy toy but, what, now I’m too much for you?

 

MM: We all have our predilictions and proclivities and –

 

Dicky: Unfuckingbelievable!

 

MM: [Looks to the sky] Neil! That’s enough! Enough I say!

 

They are transformed back to their original selves.

 

MM: Now, where were we? [leans in for a kiss]

 

Dicky: Eww, gross, back off.

 

MM: Dicky –

 

 

There were a bunch of lines after this but they were redacted for some reason, all blacked out. Well, I hope you enjoyed this little detour onto the cutting room floor of the Great Gaiman. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, MiracleMan is continuing in the ‘Dark Age’, and – no comment.

 

Rating: 8.1

Verdict: Keep Pulling and Yanking

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #1 - Review

 

I got a bone to pick with you Hickman. Shit, I got a whole skeleton to pick with you. Me dropping 6 buckaroos on the first Spider-Man book I’ve purchased in over, oh I dunno, 30 years, gives me the right to rip you a new one since it’s your name on the book. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve bought a Spidey book since those McFarlane days back in the 90s. Those were the fucking days, when comics meant something and Heroes were fucking Heroes. Yeah, I’m amped up for this review so if you’re a jittery easily triggered neurologically damaged dweeby snowflake who drinks decaf with soy milk and eats spelt cookies sweetened with tear duct sugar then this may not be the place for you and your fragile psych.

 

Hickman, you Son of a Bitch! You left me hanging, twice! Maybe you’ve forgotten, hmm? You started two books, which were fucking amazing, and just ghosted the book! Don’t give me your excuses, who fucking does that? Who just stops writing a comic book??? Have you ever gone to a movie and it just stops halfway? You ever buy a novel that’s unfinished? Ever buy an album and all the songs just stop for no fucking reason? For those of you who may not know I’m talking about ‘The Dying and the Dead’ and the ‘Black Monday Murders’ two unbelievably spectacular comic books that not only looked beautiful beyond words but had some of the most engaging plots of the past decade or so – and yet, they just, stopped. Stopped. Dude, I get ghosted enough in my life, I don’t need comic books making me feel abandoned and wondering if they’re wrapped around some douchebag’s dick on a forever pool rather than sitting in my hands because I’m inadequate.

 

Do you hang out with Matt Fraction and talk shit about how you’ve left mad plots and story arcs hanging while smoking spliffs and peeing on pictures of Zdarsky??? Fraction, that’s another guy, leaving me hanging, Casanova, ODYC, WTF?!? You know who I would actually like to leave me hanging? Marvel. Like, every piece of content they’re working on, all of them. Like, just walk away from all of the comic books and movies, like, today, just drop them, all of them, so someone else who actually cares more about the story than the variant cover can deliver the goods to people who are starving for comics that make them go fuck yeah.

 

So, why pick this comic up if I’m so ornery, vindictive and kvetchy about Hicksy and Marvisney? Because it’s still Hicksy. Hicksy brings the ruffneck bizness. It’s like if Quentin Tarantino was tasked to direct the next mind numbing MCU flop with characters that nobody’s ever heard of, I’d be there opening night, cuz, well, it’s QT! I’d love to see a bunch of has-been actors cursing at the top of their lungs while riddling bullets at each other in front of cheezy AI graphics while Sam Jackson playing Nick Fury finally gets to say Mofo in a Marvisney movie. That’s why I picked this comic up, and guess what, it’s really good.

 

Dammit Hickman! This book is fucking good! What the hell! Uggh, I can’t lie, I want to, but I can’t. That final panel with Peter standing on the roof after becoming Spidey for the first time gave me all the feels. I even peeked ahead online to find out when the second issue was coming out. I did! Apparently I already pulled it, who knew??? Look, Hicksy can spin a tale and Checetto can draw his ass off, I mean, this should have been great no matter what. I guess I’m so used to everything coming out of Marvel’s Printing Press to be unadulterated poop the fact that it wasn’t is jarring.

 

I had zero context or idea about anything coming into this comic. I have no idea what an ‘Ultimate Universe’ is or what Spidey’s been doing for the past 30 years. Apparently he married MJ, popped out a couple of kids and grew a Hipster beard. Is he working at Micro-Brewery now? REI? Is he making calls for Bernie Sanders? Look at that beard! Did he join Kabbalah and help everyone out by spinning the red yarn bracelets in bulk from his Spidey goo? Peter looks like he hangs out with Ben Affleck and is working on a low budget documentary that Affleck is funding. I do not like this beard at all. I can see Parker with mutton chops or a little hippie patch underneath his bottom lip. This beard makes him look like he’s gonna be cast as the butt of a Larry David joke in a ritzy hotel. 

 

 

Oh, since we’re on facial hair and this is technically another Universe, ya think that J. Jonah could finally ditch the Hitler stache??? Nobody in their right or left or up in the air mind could ever look in a mirror before they shave and consciously say ‘Yup, I’m keeping the Adolph!’ Like, no way that happens. I think it’s time J. Jonah either goes clean or grows out a bushy Sam Elliott type stache. I mean, look at this guy, it’s a perfect Jonah stache. Shit, maybe Sam Elliott should run the Daily Bugle.

 

One more other gripe: the Green Goblin. Oy, I’m so over Greenie and his little rocket ship. Over it. Enough already and enough with Normie. Normie was officially ruined by Jamea Franco when he threw so many bad acting moments at that role 20 years ago it almost caused the MCU to implode before it got started. My goodness, he was fucking awful. Next, look at Greenie’s suit. It’s either Iron Man meets the Incredible Hulk or it’s Yeezy.

 

I’m gonna say it’s Yeezy, which would be incredible. I can totally see Yeezy rocking this outfit. Did you see what he wore to the Super Bowl??? Google it, it's too creepy to even post let alone look at again.

 

If Hicksy is Ballsy enough to have had Yeezy be the guy Normie calls to be Greenie that would be the most Ultimate Fucking Universe Everrrr!!!  Oh, one more thing, Hicksy steals the Princess Leia holographic message Star Wars gimmick when he has Tony Stark deliver a holographic message from an object. I guess if you own Star Wars and Spidey it’s kosher and a natural fit but it was blatantly obvious. Despite all of these missteps and the mystery of whether it is or is not Yeezy, this book was a - uggh can’t believe I’m saying this, a joy to read.  

 

I mean, let’s be real, this could turn into a dumpster fire real quick. Yeezy’s Green Goblin can start hurling swastikas at Spidey and before you know it this book will be dropped in the middle just like Dying & The Dead and Black Monday Murders. But as for right now, in this moment, I will cede and admit, it was a pretty damn great Spidey comic, despite the familiar tropes and stolen Obi Wan device.

 

Now look Hicksy, I’m still fucking pissed at you and I still want you to man up and finish what you started. Howeverrr, you just got me genuinely amped about a character that I haven’t been amped about since Slick Willie was in the White House banging interns; so that’s quite an accomplishment. Now, you know that there’s no way for Peter to be swinging around town with that Hipster beard under his skintight mask. I’m gonna haveta insist that he shaves his allegiance to Stumptown Coffee and Socialism off of his mug, unless of course Yeezy takes off the Greenie helmet and he has his Hipster beard as well. Then, all is forgiven. And I mean ALL.

 

Rating: 8.8

Verdict: Pull

 

ZORRO: MAN OF THE DEAD #1 - Review

 

 

I’m officially starting to get worried for my homie Murph the Great. After an extensive string of can’t do no wrong bonafide hits, one after the other after the other he’s kind of fallen off the wagon. It kinda happened right when the majestic Batman: The White Knight series ended. Since then he’s dropped, or more like plopped, a comic called ‘Plotholes’ which had this wacky idea that some rag tag group of literary archetypes were going around and saving books from having bad plots. It was genuinely ironic since this group should have been working on their own comic. It was the first time in history that I stopped pulling a Murphy comic. Now there’s this: Zorro.

 

Before I even get into the Big Z, I have to ask, what the hell is going on with the supposed White Knight: Wonder Woman and White Knight: Justice League? I thought that was coming down the pike after he was done with Bats? Weren’t we all super duper psyched for this shit? He teased it at the end of his last White Knight and we all almost spontaneously combusted, at least I did. Since then? Nada. This is the equivalent of sending me nudes on a dating app and then deleting me from your chat the next day.

 

 

 

I literally just googled for White Knight Wonder Woman and got jack diddly poo. I did the same for Justice League, where are they? Am I using the wrong search terms? Is it on the dark web? Has it been renamed The Indigenous Knight and the Wonder Person by DC for their DEI/ESG score? The last update is from February of last year! What the hell! Has it been canned??? DC! You rat bastards, what hast thou done!?!?

 

See, now this makes sense. If I’m Murph, I’m totally floored. While his hot wife Katana is out on tour promoting her erotic fiction he’s probably at a dive bar in Sherman Oaks, drowning his sorrows over some piss water made by some hipsters in Glendora while munching on a basket of fake potato GMO fries made from monkfruit and bugs. I bet during his drunken stupor a fanboy waddled over to him and encouraged him to keep the creative juices flowing. That’s when Murphy pitched the kid in the Bat Suit below the idea he came up with when he was 10 years old and working for the school library, the one about the literary characters saving books from bad writing.

 

 

The fanboy probably exclaimed “That sounds awesome dude!” Then Murph, after puking up the bug fries on the fanboy’s sailor moon t-shirt, probably pitched him dream his project of doing a Zorro book set today amidst the Mexican Cartel crisis. The fanboy, now sensing he could get an inapproptiate handy from Murph and then sue him for it later, probably extolled the idea as genius and asked Murph to follow him to the Men’s room. I hope Murph passed out by this point.

 

Anyway, where to begin, umm, yeah, sure, let’s put a kid who’s been a mute since his childhood due to his dad being shot to death in public by the Cartel for simply dressing up as a fictional character, all of a sudden decide to don the costume and take on the cartel after his sister, who for some ridiculous reason has been working for the Cartel as a driver, shoots one of their henchmen. Of course the kid carves a Z into one of the henchmen who returns to the cartel with a bloody Z on his chest.

 

The only logical follow up from this development is if in the following issue the kid in the Zorro outfit is carved up with the entire alphabet on his body with some cuneiform and Sanskrit thrown in for shits and giggles. I can’t even begin to describe what would happen to his sister. Hmm, perhaps this is what our raging border crisis needs! Zorro! Some dude in a black silk outfit and an epee swash buckling his way up and down the Rio Grande is what this country needs! That’s what will stop the fentanyl from pouring into the country, why didn’t we think of this earlier?!?

 

Maybe the timing of this book isn’t right. Maybe if it was released in the 80s or 90s when drug culture and the idea of the cartel was more of a romantic notion than a real one. But I dunno, if you had a comic where Flash Gordon saves the world from school shootings I think it’d be a clunker if it was released next week. I think that’s why it’s so frustrating that hero books suck so bad right now. It would be wonderful if we could escape for a few minutes into an amazing hero comic these days. Escape into a world where the good guy actually does take down the bad guy since our world doesn’t seem to provide much of that at all. The genius of Murphy was that he created a completely new world for Bats and used it to work through a lot of themes and story lines that would never have been possible in the normal DC Universe. It’s why it worked so brilliantly and it’s why I’m fucking dying for more. Alas, the well has run dry.

 

Look, Batman no matter what alternative Universe he’s from isn’t gonna be able to take down the Cartel, you think a kid who’s been working on his fencing skills with Gramps is going to do it??? I get that in a world that has gone mad we feel helpless and in moments of despair we fantasize about fantastical wild solutions to complex and savage problems. But the idea of ‘Zorro takes on the Cartel’ should have been shot down in a pitch meeting like a clay target at a skeet shooting range. Howeverrrrr, I will say this, it’s only four issues and it be slim pickings out there so I’m probably gonna drop the remaining $12 on the remaining 3 issues unless issue 2 really jumps a whole ocean of sharks. Murphy can still draw his ass off and you know what? Sure, Zorro and his Sis vs. the Cartel, and go! Let’s see what you got.

 

Maybe Murphy needs to send his Zorro to a local Whole Foods. He can do that thing that the bouncing smiling face did in those Walmart commercials as it slashed prices. The Big Z can bound down the aisles on his horse slashing prices back to 2019. Now that would be some heroic shit right there: Dude, Zorro just reduced my organic free range non GMO eggs down from $12 to $6! Wait, I think that's just the homeless dude from outside on a stuffed animal...

 

 

Rating: 7.3

Verdict: Pull for the Name not the Game.   

January '24 Reading Round Up

'Twas a busy January for yours truly but I found enough pockets of time to dive into some pretty exciting books including Somna, a fireball of naughty goodness. Could this be the sexiest comic book ever? Holy fuck-a-moley is Somna hot, wowza; more please? Yeesh, hubba to the fuckin' hubba. Look, I’m not into demons and all that but if a demon haunting and turning on some chick living during the Salem Witch Trials is what’s gonna get Tula Lotay all hot in her knickers to draw the panties off of this book then give me that dang demon!

 

They call this Erotic Folk Horror. I’m not sure that’s accurate, I mean, what’s folksy about it? The parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme falling from this chick’s dress as she demon diddles? I’m not scared at all. I’m scared this will end too quickly and I’ll be looking at the solicits when some other supernatural being will be whispering naughty nothings in a female protagonist. Ooh look, Fraction is writing a tale where a Kraken gets a Mermaid all hot and bothered, sweet!

 

All kidding aside there is some masterful art going on this book. Tula Lotay is on a major roll lately with Barnstormers being one of the last books I read of hers that she totally knocked out of the park. Apparently this is a 10 years in the making collab between Cloonan and Lotay. I didn’t know I was waiting for it but I’m glad it’s finally here. What a gorgeous spectacular work these two have created, bravo to them and DSTLRY for blessing the marketplace. Now don’t get corny! Keep that Demon sexy! I

 

Masterpiece - This was pretty good. Nothing wow but good. It’s way better than BMB's ‘Jagger Rose’ offering but not even close to ‘Pearl’ which was an all time great book. Bendis and Maleev are a dynamic duo and while reading this you’re thinking ‘Can’t they just do Daredevil every month for the next 50 years?’ As far as the whole ‘Billionaire is ripped off by a teenage girl’s parents who now are missing so Billionaire now goes after teenage girl’ storyline, it’s aight. Feels a bit dated. Maybe if Bendis made it very clear he was referencing a specific current Billionaire like Bezos, Musk or Gates this would be really cool. As it stands it’s just some anonymous wacko with beaucoup bucks, woop de doo. I’m down to follow along for now.

 

 

Gargoyle of Gotham – I wasn’t really into the first issue of this book, it felt a bit goofy. The Crytoon Dude seemed a bit over the top with his pronounced tears pouring prodigiously from his face as he committed his violent acts. Also, the overall cartoonish look of Grampa’s art didn’t seem in line with the heavy story he was telling. Then I pulled the ‘Noir Edition’ for the second issue. I didn’t know the noir edition was anything special, I simply liked the cover out of the 508,223 covers that a Bat Book usually has and pulled it. Well, turns out the ‘Noir Edition’ meant that it was all in black and white with no color save for red when blood was being spilled. And you know what? It worked great! Maybe the second issue was great anyway but the B&W feel really amped up the story for me. It felt like one of those black and white anime books. Also, the second issue kind of moved the Crytoon Dude aside and focused on these weird new characters which totally has me intrigued. Maybe DC should make all of their titles black and white. Maybe that will make them great - ah who the fuck am I kidding, they’ll still suck. But this? This was dope.

 

Wonder Woman – Tom King is writing the living bejeezus out of this book. He’s writing as if he’s got a gambling or drug addiction and needs DC to keep him on payroll to so he can keep funding his vices. There’s a lot to like about this new Dubz arc and although it still ain’t near the Azzarello/Chiang level it’s waaay better than the years of blecchhh this title has been enduring. Real quickly, DC, look, can you stop with these God Awful back stories that look like they were written and drawn by Freshman at the Kubert School for comics. They’re never fucking good, they’re just extra unnecessary pages that you fluff the comic up with to justify the $5 price tag. Think I’m wrong? Go ahead and release $4 books without them and $5 books with them and watch 95% of the sales go to the $4 book. They’re trash. Please tell me how I can opt out of back story bingo, thanks. I will say I'm a little on edge with how Dubz now has to fight a new rag tag cast of wacky characters in wacky costumes in the next installment. I'm sure some morally corrupted DC editor insisted on dredging up characters reject that had to be used by King; it's like a DC rite of passage. Luckily for us King's drug/gambling habit will force him to produce a genius outcome!

 

The Sacrificers – I have a rule when it comes to comics or any type of entertainment: I can deal with violence and gore if I have to do but if you stoop so low as to maim or violently murder pets or animals then I’m done; I will turn you off or put you down. Rick Remender, who I generally love, crossed that line with his 5^th installment of this book which is clearly an ode to the unspoken adrenochrome crisis that tears this planet apart. In this book one of the character’s minions gruesomely ripped the Princess’s pet in half. Yeah, fuck you dude. Totally uncalled for and a cheap way to elicit empathy towards your female lead. I will begrudgingly finish up this arc since I already have issue 6 but that’s as far as I’m going. C’mon dude, do better than pet murders, mmkay?

 

 

Red Light – So this comic is basically ‘An AI Hooker wants to escape being a Sex Slave’ story. The douchebag dude who ‘owns’ her made her in the image of his dead wife and runs an AI Hooker Brothel that’s armed to the teeth with guards and guns cuz, I dunno, maybe he assumed the Sex Robots would revolt or want to leave eventually? My existential question is this, should I really be rooting for an AI Hooker Sex Slave Chick to escape the evil clutches of the D-Bag Pimp? Like, isn’t it better to have AI Robot Hookers doing the Sex Work and being exploited rather than Humans? Aren’t we better with that? If we replace all sex workers with sex robots and lose zero in quality wouldn’t we want that? So, no more abuse, exploitation and sex trafficking of minors anymore, just, let the robots satisfy the pervs of the world? Should we feel bad for robots being used for nothing but sex? I don’t think so. But what do I know. I’m sure next week The View will have a sex robot on talking about the evil patriarchy and how it’s somehow Donald Trump’s fault that she’s a Sex Robot.

Where the Body Was - I usually don't review Graphic Novels. Actually, I rarely purchase them to be honest, I'm more of a serial monthly type dude. Yet with the comic book industry generally up in flames and hurdling to a slow death I'm forced to look for content to sate my need to enjoy sequential art with my coffee in the morning. Brubaker and Phillips are bonafide titans of the industry and put out nothing but amazing books. Seems like they've forgone the whole 'monthly' comic deal and have just been putting out graphic novels for the past several years. Their 'Reckless' series was fucking awesome. If you haven't checked out those books I highly recommend it. Their recent offering was garnering the usual gush and praise that they usually receive, but, I gotta say, it was...mnyeh. I mean, it wasn't bad it just wasn't OMG amazing. It was, I dunno, just O, no MG. I enjoyed it but, maybe save your pennies for the Reckless stuff. The big reveal wasn't even that big, it was just, kinda there. I will say, the sex scenes in the book were spicy. Are we entering a year where sexy stuff starts coming back? Oh please oh please oh please us.

 

Coming up, I bought my first Spider Man book in almost 15 years! Will it suck? Probably. Will I rip Hickman a new one? 100 percent I will.

CRAVE #1 - Review

 

Some would say there has been a concerted effort by the World Elites over the past several decades to depopulate the planet. They’ve introduced the Climate Scam and made people think they are in fact a virus, promoted abortions worldwide, poisoned the food supply, introduced hormone blocking chemicals into any and every product they could get their hands on, made porn accessible to anyone so that it’s easier to stay at home and get off rather than forage out and into the world for love and satisfaction. Fertility, birth rates and sperm counts are at an all time low everywhere you look. All of those are valid arguments to indicate there’s been an agenda to systematically eliminate humans. But the biggest tool used by the elites to prevent humans from meeting, copulating and creating children and families is:

Dating Apps.

 

Dating apps are a scourge on the planet. One could argue they have done more to disintegrate and antagonize male/female relationships than any other technological and chemical advance in the history of the Universe. Yeah, sure, blah, blah, people have met their soulmates and found love and great connections on these apps. But it’s probably the same percentage of people that win lotteries or win actual prizes from those scratch off games.

 

Humanity, if AI lets us stick around, will look back upon this period of Dating Apps many many years from now and wonder how men and women weren’t using ice picks and machetes on each other in the streets due to the inordinate amount of frustration and angst that dating apps gave them.

 

I think a great business idea would be to open a space where people could post the pictures of all the profiles that made them feel useless, used, ugly and unworthy so that they and other people could walk in and scream and throw rotten produce at it. It would be like an art gallery for ‘unemployed fake ass busta douchebags’ and ‘stank ass skeezy dick teasing hos’ that everyone has fallen prey to on these fucking apps from Hades. I think the High Ranking Demons came to the Pope or Satan or both one day and said that the world still believed in God and Love and they hatched a plan together to create dating apps so that people would not only stop believing in God and Love but question whether it ever existed in the first place.

 

I’ve tried every single fucking dating app. If my soul was a dick then it would be great because they have all sucked my soul dry. I wish I could get back all the time I’ve spent on these illusions. If you said ‘You can have a chance at every beautiful in woman the world on your phone’ or I’ll let you loose naked and covered in dung on a Victoria’s Secret party in the hills for 15 minutes I would’ve taken the naked dung offer. What. A fucking scam. It is the illusion of choice. Nothing but greener grass wherever you look and it’s ruined male female relationships or any type of preferred gender relationship for a long time. 

 

 

Why? The main reason is this: Why bother talking to that cute guy/girl on line at the supermarket or sitting with their friends at the bar when there are a hundred of them on your phone? Why bother dealing with the ups and downs of what it takes to get to know somebody you really like when you can just hit the reset button every day and find someone new on your phone? What dating apps have done is they have removed us from our lives and shoved our faces and our desires into our phones. So what happens is we miss life that’s happening all around us at all times. We forgo taking a chance or making a move that’s steeped in fear and possible rejection for the easier option of a swipe.

 

 

Now? Nobody talks to anybody anywhere. I used to talk to girls everywhere out in the world. Now? Nothing. You can just feel it. People are weirded out when a complete stranger starts chatting them up. Sure, there are exceptions but in one of the largest cities in the world (Los Angeles) we just move amongst each other in silence or in packs; there is close to zero interaction and it’s pathetically depressing.

 

 

So I was intrigued when I saw a comic about a dating app. Oh, you might ask, what’s the worst dating app/site of them all? Sorry, they all sucked in unique and interesting ways. I would say the most debilitating aspect of them all is that so many times I never knew if I was talking to a real person, a real girl or a bot.  Is this hot babe a dude posing as a girl, or maybe it’s a 400 pound bedridden meth addict in the middle of nowhere. That’s why I use the Raya app because at least they vet everyone on there and you can confirm they’re real with their Insta account. Although with AI these days, who fucking knows. Still, even with thousands of real people on the we screen for real interesting people app, nobody talks to anyone or messages back. It’s a thing.

 

 

Okay, so back to this comic. It fucking sucks, just like a dating app. I don’t even know where to begin. It’s like a bad CW Show if a CW Show was spam ads on your Insta feed. There’s an app called crave that gives you everything you want when it comes to whoever is on the app. It’s set in a college environment so it’s a controlled location and supposedly once you tell the app what you want it delivers it to you. Oh go fuck yourself. I’m insulted by how cavalier it just assumes acquiescence. A lot of the hooking up has to do with ‘Oh you want so and so, they’re here go get them’. So one scenario has a meek little loser ending up in an elevator with this hot chick. Now the hot chick doesn’t know anything about the meek little loser but we’re to assume that meek little loser hooks up. Yeah, no.

 

I mean, what the hell do I know? It is college and given how horny you are in college maybe this app works, especially these days with kids so sexualized. Back when I was in college we had ‘Let’s talk about Sex’ by Salt n Pepa and ‘Red Light Special’ by TLC as naughty songs. The most risqué video was the frikkin’ ‘Thong Song’. Now they got WAP. Like basically, they should just come out with a song now that says shove your stuff in my crotch and suck suck suck; call it ‘Suck Suck Suck’. Instead of the ‘Thong Song’ I’m wating for the song called ‘Cervix’. It’ll be five minutes of someone wailing in Autotune ‘Hit my Cervix Harder!’ Regardless, this is a comic and I need a, you know, a story, which would be nice. There’s some flimsy plot about a normal looking dude who has a blah normal looking uppity girlfriend that he ditches for this other hot blonde chick who ignores him but who is probably on the app doing naughty things and gee, I wonder, will he end up doing naughty things with her? Yaaaaawwwn.

 

Yes the hot blonde that grips this normal dude who has zero likability is the chick on the cover with the nipple tape. I would say as a rule of thumb if you see nipple tape at a chick’s place, run. Is there a preferred nipple tape brand or do they just get by with 3M or Scotch tape. I wonder if that’s like a convo in nipple tape circles. Maybe when you see a bunch of scantily clad hotties arguing in a club it’s not about men or where to shop it’s about the pros and cons of using duct tape as nipple tape versus caution tape.

 

Oh, that’s another thing, the roommate of the lead boring loser leaves for the weekend or something and before he goes he leaves a post-it note on a desktop monitor to warn his roomie to not use the Crave app. Are you fucking kidding me? Do you think college kids even know what a ‘post it’ is other than to mean put that reel up of you puking on so and so on your Insta account? And really? A desktop monitor in a college dorm??? Oh yeah, I’m sure college kids are all about old school 15” desktop iMacs, or are they Commodore 64s on their desks? How ridiculous, I’m gonna write a comic about a dating app and use a post-it note on a desktop monitor as a plot device. I suppose in the next issue our lead loser gets a message on his answering machine that he doesn’t get in time and he’s also unable to receive pings on his Motorola two-way pager. Oy vey.

 

Another major gripe that I have is I’m totally taken out of the story by this Maria Lovett person putting her name on a chunk of the panels. What is this shit? Is this a thing now? The dude who did Scott Snyder’s ‘Night of the Ghoul’ did this, some Franky Franachancavilla dude. Is this like comic book artist tagging? I get yanked out of the story when I’m reading it and I see a name on the art, like it just pops my imagination bubble. Look at this:

 

 

Those little circles in the corner, which are all over the comic, have her name in it and the year although the year is 2022 which tells me, hmm, what does it tell me, it tells me that there should still be zero references to post-it notes and fucking desktop monitors!!!

 

I will leave you with this. Here’s the thing with dating apps. I’ve met my share of girls off of the apps. Maybe one or two at most looked like their pictures and of them all maybe only one or two did I feel like I had an actual vibe with. Everybody else was a major disappointment or when we met it felt awkward and wonky despite our dozens of messages that we had sent each other. The reason being is that nothing beats vibe. Nothing beats the feeling you get when you see someone in person for the first time and it’s far more of a surer thing to get that vibe from meeting someone out in the world than it is to connect with them on the illusion that they’re projecting on the app. Period. Yes, I hear from many that this is the organic way of meeting somebody these days and to that I say, go fuck yourself. 

 

 

The tag line of this comic is ‘Tell us what you Crave – We’ll make it happen’. Okay, I crave that all dating apps would go poof and we’d get back to the joy of finding someone in our day to day lives again.

 

Crave? Swipe left.

 

Rating: 5.5

Verdict: Drop

THE BEST COMIC BOOKS OF 2023

 

                  THE BEST COMIC BOOKS OF 2023

Is the Comic Book Industry falling apart? Well, I think you can swap out ‘Comic Book Industry’ and put almost any business model, institution or political party before the words ‘falling apart’ and it would be an apt statement for this past year or two. Yet this year, more than any other, has been in my view one of the roughest years of comic books that I can remember. It just felt waaaay off. I mean, I hear how LCS retailers are constantly complaining about the publishers. I see how stores are closing all over the country. I hear the Comic Book Pundits (am I one? Mmm, not really) decrying the ills and missteps of the industry itself. Fans seem to whining and moaning left and right, what the fuck is going on?

 

Well, I can only speak from the experience of a dude who has been buying comics for over 40 years. What I would say is, mmm, it’s not that it’s falling apart it’s that it’s been reassigned. In other words, comics are means to other ends especially when you’re talking about the Big Poo (the Big 2). For these corporate death stars, comics feed into its inordinate amount of IP offerings that are charted on X & Y Axis graphs and all kinds of business degree mumbo jumbo bullshit that have basically ruined comic books. Sure, the independents are going strong. Wait, no, scratch that, Image is still going strong while other independents thrash and claw for a limited audience with either rehashed characters or gruesome over the top silly horror/sexy books. Dark Horse got bought out by a gaming company and their titles have also sunk to new lows of blecchh. Even Image, as wonderful as they are, didn’t knock a lot out of the park this year.

 

Here’s the bottom line for me: I bought 150 comic books this year. That’s the lowest amount of comics I’ve purchased since I started keeping track of it about 15 years ago. Back in the heyday of 2016-2018 I was buying over 300 comics a year. So what happened? Well, Marvel got bought out by Satan aka Disney and their comics became all but unreadable. 

 

I seriously root for Disney’s stock to crater every day with the hopes that, I dunno, they sell Marvel cuz they need the cash or don’t care anymore? DC? I dunno either, last year was the year of their amazing run of Black Label titles, this year? Pure poop. I don’t think anyone knows what the fuck to do or how to do it over in DC and it shows. Their recent Aqua Turd movie is dead in the water as was most of the garbage they put out this year. So when you have the Two Pillars of the Industry mired in caca it fucks things up for everyone else. One would think “oh there’s now a void to fill because Marvel & DC are churning out titles that look like the pink goo that they make McNuggets with” but it’s actually the opposite. Hate on them as much as you want but Marvel & DC are comic books. If they’re going strong everybody is going strong because that means butts in the Comic Book shops which means more sales of the independent offerings.

 

Here’s another reason why I bought less books: y’all raised the prices a bit too much. See, back in the day I could jump on a book for 5-6 issues, grab a mini-series for 4 issues, try out a series and spend about $15, woop dee doo. Now, every story arc/mini series is like $25-30, hmm, yeah fuck that! If issue one sucks, buh to the bye homie. Now I’ll check out the solicits for future issues to see what’s going on with the plot before I decide to pick something up whereas before I wouldn’t care, I’d just add it to my pull and read the whole series, because, well, I love comics. But I’m not trying to spend over $100 a month on comics right now especially since most of them are so disappointing. So with the quality of books in the toilet and the prices up it makes for a very nasty combination.

 

Mark Millar, who I’m not a big fan of but who I deeply respect as guy who loves comics, had this to say on what he thinks should be the fix for the industry

 

Mark Millar's Comic Book Plan

 

I wouldn’t know if this would work or not but it’s clear to me that something has to change. Somebody has to come in and clean fucking house at the Big 2 like Javier Milei is doing in Argentina. I need a Comic Book Geek of the People to go in the same way that Javier did and get rid of all the Editors and Ideological Fuckwits that have ruined Hero Books.

 

Yo Marvel and DC Dipshit Editors? AFUERA!

 

There’s a guy who makes amazing videos about the Comic Book Industry. I would say he is the true voice of reason for Comic Book Geeks like myself and it’s clear that he loves comics as much as anyone. I remember watching a video of his where he said that the Big 2 were more interested in the Variant Cover market than they were in actually making good comics. So, that makes a whole lot of sense to me. People are buying up covers at astronomical prices regardless of what’s inside so the more you poop out and the more you create artificial scarcity for them the more shekels you will make. That’s all well and good for your corporate hooker and blow budget but, yeah, sucks for us. If that is what’s really going on then we may not see the end of this downturn for a while until they cut back on these variants. You can check out this dude’s channel here:

 

Thinking Critical 

 

Anyway, as for the ‘Best of the Year’ it was a slog to say the least. Last year I chose a dozen books that were absolutely amazing along with some honorable mentions. This year? I couldn’t even find 10 titles that blew me out of the water. Not even 10 for goodness sake. I went over every week of my pulls and, man, I pulled a lot of stuff that ended up sucking ass. To be clear, this list isn’t of comics that were good, or decent or really good. This is a list of Greatness. This is a list of books that after I put them down I went ‘That was fucking awesome’ If I didn’t feel like that then it’s not on this list. So yeah, not that many to choose from but these did the trick, here ya go…

 

 

8. Deep Cuts - A series of stories that travel through the history of Jazz? Sign me the fuck up! Kyle Higgins and Joe Clark along with some bad ass artists deliver some wonderfully poignant and historically accurate tales that span the early decades of Jazz. I really wish this was an ongoing series rather than a standard ‘Six issues and we’re done’ affair. That’s something that would be exciting to dive into every month. I really loved the sheet music that they included in the back matter and the homage to Blue Note. This was Image's Golden Offering of the Year by far. For some reason they dropped three issues and then stopped in July but it looks like they’re picking up again in January. 

 

 

7. barnstormers - Dark Horse has been reprinting all of Scott Snyder’s Comixology’s Originals Digital Series into 3 issue Drops for the past year or so. One was atrocious (We Have Demons) one was mediocre (Night of the Ghoul) one was really good (Clear) but this one was downright awesome. I’d say the main reason besides an out of the box story of a death defying pilot and his forbidden love on the run is Tula Lotay’s spectacularly beautiful art that graced each and every panel. Bonnie & Clyde take to the air! What an absolute joy to read. Snyder’s got another one that just started, ‘Canary’ and so far it’s also a great first issue. Go Scott Go!

 

 

 

 

 

6. The Avengers: War Across Time - The best thing Marvisney put out all year by far was a Retro Series. What a fucking blast it was to read a story that hit on all the right notes from the Golden Era of Comics! They dusted off some dude named Paul Levitz who was probably busy noshing on a pastrami sandwich at Katz’s Deli and made him pop out a paean to what made hero books great: bright colors, silliness, goofy and sexy dialogue, gravitas, time machines and buildings and streets that were always being destroyed or spewing lava men. I’ve been saying for years that Marvisney should just publish monthly facsimile issues of their great titles like Spidey & FF & The Avengers on a monthly basis so it could give us the feeling that we’re reading them as if we were living back in the 60s when they first came out. But that would be too much fun, so, that won't work these days.

 

 

 

 

5. Love Everlasting - The second arc of what very well might be Tom King’s masterpiece of a series upped the ante and the wow factor on what already was a perfectly executed story of Joan Peterson and the multiple timelines of deadly love that follows and torments her through all of her lives in all of the different eras that she has lived in. Written in the style of a dimestore comic book romance this mind trip of a book just kept getting better and better from issue to issue. It’s one of those rare books that you really get excited about when you see a new issue pop up on the solicits. Elsa Charretier is officially an Art Super Star and I will follow her work wherever she goes. I will also say that so far King's first few issues on Wonder Woman are quite good, the best Dubz story I’ve read in ages! Tom King comin’ wit da ruffneck bidness in the two three boyeee.

4. Batman: City of Madness - It was a really tough year for my homie Bats. I just could not get into anything that he was in. All the books were just blah or refried plot beans. Sean Murphy ended his beyond brilliant White Knight run on a ‘ehh, that was cool but not great’ note then handed it off to his wonderful wife and a putz who wrote a series about the Joker’s kids which I couldn’t stomach. I suffered month after month begging the Comic Book Universe to deliver me a majestic Bat Book and it finally answered my prayers at the very end of the year with Christian Ward’s eye popping beast of a book. My goodness, give this man an ongoing series for the next five years! In a year of cheap fake meat Bat burger stories this was the Wagyu patty with the Goldleaf Bun story that beat the bejeezus out of them all. Hopefully this is the beginning of a new run of great Black Label titles.

 

 

 

 

 

3. Rare Flavours - The creative team behind one of the best comics of the decade ’The Many Deaths of Laila Starr’ returned with another magical tale that invoked the earthly representation of another Hindu deity. This time around it’s a Raksha or demon that fancies itself as a type of cannibalistic Anthony Bourdain. Each issue just feels like an event as you’re transported away from your life and immersed into a fully realized elevated world of monstrous beauty. I feel like these two had a conversation that went something like 'Should we tell the Demon Bourdain story now or should we wait?' as if they were waiting for the perfect moment to unleash this gem of a story on humanity.  Ram V and Filipe Andrade have that uncanny artistic synergy that doesn’t come along very often in comics. Catch them while you can. 

2. A Vicious Circle - Only one issue of this mind blowing three issue series was released this year, over six months after its first issue which was released in December of 2022 but oh what a fucking issue it is. The art in this comic is absolutely astonishing. Lee Bermejo puts on a clinic on how to turn a comic book into art gallery material. I suppose with the amount of assumed work and attention to detail that went into each of the first two issues it’s understandable why it takes them so long to release them. Mattson Tomlin’s exhilarating time jumping story of mortal enemies does more than enough to keep up with Bermejo’s legendary work. A book like this puts publishers and creators on notice. This is how it’s done. This is how you make a statement to the world on why comic books matter. Despite it being limited to only three issues this is a time traveling book for the ages.

1. Conan The Barbarian - By Crom you did it! You wrested the Conan license away from the evil clutches of Marvisney and showed the entire planet how to make a Hero Book. True, this Cimmerian isn’t like the heroes of neon tights and inter-galactic superpowers but make no mistake, this Barbarian slashed his way through those mangy curs to the top of the heap of the comic book world this year. Oh, what a joy to experience the true unbridled love that the creators of this comic most certainly have for this character and for them to have the courage to present him in all of his glory. In a pathetic world where nitwits, meager mealy mouthed toads and spindly cowards froth at the mouth with their idiotic claims of toxic masculinity, Titan Comics had the balls to say ‘Yeah, fuck that, here’s Conan’. 

 

And yes, it wasn’t just their approach, Jim Zub’s writing and Roberto De La Torre’s art was as perfect a match for Conan as you could ask for. What an absolute triumph. If you’ve never read a Conan story before you could actually pick up the first arc of this book and know exactly what it’s like to read one of the best from the past as it feels just as authentic as any of Robert E. Howard’s offerings. Perhaps this is the future of comic books. Is it possible for a group of hyper excited artists and writers to somehow get the licenses from all of our favorite heroes and start them over for us? Can we join Conan on his pirate ship with Belit and do a hostile takeover of the Hulk, Spidey and Iron Man? Can we have Scott Snyder and Christian Ward storm DC's offices with guns blazing and take Batman from them? 

 

Is this the way? Will there need to be a Comic Book Civil War? Drastic times call for drastic measures. Titan's 'Conan' reminded me how amazing it is to read a heroic tale. Yes, all genres can be found in comics but it's the heroes that really shine the most. It's the heroes that we can't find in our world, lifting buildings, shooting lasers out of their eyes, flying above us, it's these heroes that we find next to the staples of the pages of our favorite childhood titles that inspire us the most. And yes, we're adults and we have jobs and responsibilities now that go beyond these tales. Yet these tales remind us of what can be, not only in the world but within ourselves. They reminds us that life is a magical journey where anything can happen at any moment. The improbable victories over evil that we read in the pages of strong iconic heroes can somehow give us what we need to overcome the obstacles that we face in our lives.

And so as we turn the page on another year I see hope for a return to this glorified experience of reading comics that sit in our hands, not in our computers. I'm not sure how it will happen but I know it's possible. 

“There is always a way, if the desire be coupled with courage,” - Conan

 

Happy New Year - Issac