Sympathy For The Devil: The Strange Talent of Luther Strode #6 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply… spoilers.

Now that everything is all said and done, it turns out that writer Justin Jordan has done something very interesting with The Strange Talent of Luther Strode: he has created a superhero comic book in which the hero is well and truly an unstoppable killing machine from a 1980s slasher flick. It is Halloween from the point of view of Michael Myers, or Friday The 13th as told by Jason Voorhees, only written as tragedy and I’m not getting my first handjob in a sticky theater back row during one of its Roman numeraled sequels (yet).

Jordan has made a leap in logic that I don’t think I’ve seen before except maybe by those millions of Generation X’ers who bought talking Freddy Kreuger dolls and traded his best kill quips in study hall, and certainly never codified in print. And that is that if an 80s slasher film villain is unstoppable, unkillable, and has some great catchphrases? And if they wear an easily-identifiable costume and or a mask (Freddy’s sweater, Michael Myers / Jason Voorhees masks)? Then the only difference between them and a comic book superhero is motivation and (sometimes) method. After all, where the rubber hits the road, the only difference between Freddy and Wolverine a surface level is the word “bub” over “bitch” and the violent murder of Johnny Depp, to which Wolverine can still only aspire.

If You Have To Explain The Joke, There’s No Joke – Suicide Squad #7

In order to do due diligence for this review of Suicide Squad #7, “The Origin Of Harley Quinn”, I was going to re-read 1994’s The Batman Adventures: Mad Love by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm. Dini, after all, created Harley Quinn and, frankly, my first reaction after reading the conclusion to Adam Glass’s reboot of her character was that I wanted to read the original. However, Mad Love doesn’t appear to be on any of our book shelves at the moment – which means it’s in any one of 23 separate, unlabeled long boxes that are stashed in the closet of the Home Office’s second bedroom, and I just don’t have the patience to go digging.

You know what is out and easily accessible on the book shelves of Home Office Command Central? Batman: Son Of The Demon…just in case Rob wants to get into a drunken pissing contest with a 12 year-old who has a theory that Batman is gay and that Damien was grown in a petri dish in the Bat Cave.

Stranger things have happened. Both here and in the Bat Cave. But, I digress…

The thing is, this issue, and most of the Suicide Squad run in general, isn’t bad. Some of it is pretty good – but it’s not as good as what Dini and company first came up with, even if it’s trying for darker, edgier, clown car…ier, whatever. Perhaps that just my own failing that I can’t get past that.

Or is it? Spoilers and whatnot after the jump.

But With A Whimper: Avengers #24 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: And there came a day, a day unlike any other, when Crisis On Infinite Midlives douchiest editors found themselves united against a common threat. Spoilers Assemble!

I am perhaps not the best person to review Avengers #24 objectively, since I have gone on record as not being the biggest proponent of the whole Dark Reign 2 / Return of Norman Osborn / Dark Avengers Redux storyline. Based on particular individual issues in this crossover, I had somewhat softened my original opinion about the story arc, but considering my original prejudices, I perhaps cannot be trusted to be impartial in my opinions about this semi-ending to the story.

However, considering that you have made it this far after being spoiler and prejudice-warned on a Web site where the tagline on every page proclaims me to be a grumpy drunkard, I now feel safe in telling you that the ending of this story is so Goddamned wretchedly and horrifyingly bad it cheapens the entire arc, which I didn’t hold in particularly high value in the first place. In terms of excitement, this ending ranks with “And then I woke up.” In terms of a climax, this is on par with “I’m sorry; this has never happened to me before.” And in terms of pacing, it can only feel like writer Brian Michael Bendis said, “Avengers Vs. X-Men starts when? Oh shit.”

In addition, this story, as did the first Dark Reign storyline a couple years back, violates what should be an obvious and cardinal rule of resolving a Norman Osborn Ascendant story that should be Goddamned obvious on its face… but I’ll get to that in a minute.

It Was A Civil War Of Period: Saga #1 Review

The first thing I noted while reading Brian K. Vaughan’s and Fiona Staples’s Saga #1 was that, with every page – and sometimes every panel – this team was raising the required budget of any possible film adaptation by several million dollars. And movie studios simply don’t spend that much on an NC-17 flick.

The second thing I noticed was that this comic book is an imaginative, large-scale space opera that simultaneously hits all the expected and classic tropes of the genre, while chucking in enough weird and mad ideas to make Grant Morrison mutter, “Shit; nice one,” and tying the whole thing together with an out-front, genuine sense of humor about itself that you won’t find outside of a Star Wars parody. This is a very, very good comic book.

They Used To Be Kind Of Light And Funny: Defenders #4 Review

Defenders #4 has almost no action. It is a team book that features the team for exactly one page. It blatantly rips off a Bill Hicks joke – and acknowledges the rip right on the same page. And yet it is one of the finest comics you will read this week – and this is a week of some good Goddamned comics.

While this issue continues the story arc established in the first three issues – the team has discovered some kind of magical construct that can grant wishes and is trying to discover its origin – it is, for all intents and purposes, a one-and-done. It is a perfect place to jump into the title, and one hell of a story with which to get acquainted. Because unlike many comic books, this issue is about something: loneliness, longing and isolation. Superhero comics, everyone!

Levity aside, this issue is a rarity in superhero comics: a truly character-driven story. Not to denigrate the genre that I love so desperately, but let’s face reality: probably half the characterizations are along the lines of any hero in a big, fun action flick – entertaining, thrilling, and about as deep as a urine sample. Sure, you get the occasional deeper character study in, say, Spider-Man, but you need to buy a lot of issues where he’s in outer space swapping insults with The Human Torch to get them (And make no mistake: I like that stuff!)… and even when you do, half the time they’re about something ridiculous, like Peter Parker negotiating with the devil. And as much as I love, say, The Punisher, I don’t read it for any insights into the human condition. I read it for insights into the human cadaver. But I’m getting off track here.

Gravity Doesn’t Suck: Stormwatch #7 Review

In reading Stormwatch #7, it occured to me that the best Stormwatch and Authority stories (and let’s face it: the New 52 Stormwatch is just The Authority with The Martian Manhunter) have been simple sci-fi and superhero comic tropes, only racked up on amphetamines and extrapolated out to their craziest violent extreme. Warren Ellis had them fight God. Mark Millar did great tales of the team fighting “The Avengers” (Sure, it was a pastiche of a famous superteam, but with personal and sexual problems… but up to a point, isn’t that all The Authority was?).

In this, writer Paul Jenkins, in his first issue on Stormwatch (First of two before Peter Milligan takes over), starts with an idea you could pull out of any Doc Savage story or early issue of Justice League of America – The Gravity Thieves! – and spins it out into a very dense-feeling, hard sci-fi(ish) story that, if not in league as the classic Ellis and Millar stories, at least it’s in the same ballpark, swinging for the fences.

The book hits pretty much every mark on the successful Authority story checklist. Weird sciency shit blowing people up in gruesome ways? Check; got that out of the way by the end of page two. Unknown, faceless entity demonstrating its power by taking out Big Gun Apollo? Yup; disembodied energy tentacles, to excite even the most darkly perverse hentai/tazer “enthusiast”. Find out that the threat is potentially extinction-level in nature to Earth? Hell, this one is capable of stealing gravity with their energy tentacles and wiping out all life in the known universe… possibly from being hit at high speed by hentai/tazer enthusiasts being flung through zero gravity in the opposite direction of their penises.

Imperious Sex! – Review Of Uncanny X-Men #8

Uncanny X-Men has come to the end of its second story arc in eight issues. Let us all throw up a rousing cheer of “meh”.

This arc has found the X-Men playing clean-up crew to a mess left by Psylocke and the other members of the mutant wetwork team, X-Force, which left a small town in outer most Mongolia Montana devastated and gave rise to an alien biosystem called Tabula Rasa. When I say “clean-up crew”, what I really mean is that Magneto (yes, for those of you not reading X-books and playing along at home, Magneto is currently an X-Man) figured out that Psylocke’s (who is also an X-Man) other team caused it. Cyclops (“Hi, my name is Scott Summers. I’m covered from head to toe in latex and appear to only have one eye!”), leader of the X-Men, has no idea what’s going on. As usual. Must be a day.

I said, back in October, that the one thing to come out of Schism/Regenesis would be me finally putting Uncanny back on my pull list after a ten year absence. Right now, I’m thinking that it’s about to come right the fuck back off again.

Fun fact – Tabula Rasa means “blank slate”, just like the heads of the pretty little porn stars Greg Land traces. Oh, and spoilers ahead.

Explosive Hemorrhage: Red Lanterns #7 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review was written when the writer was extremely hung over. This has affected his mood, and his ability to remember if he has included spoilers or not. You have been warned.

Red Lanterns is one of the damnedest comics on the stands right now. Every issue I’ve read feels like it has some kind of underlying theme, some kind of Big Message it’s trying to impart. Issue one felt like it was hinting at the underlying motivations and effect of vigilante violence. The third issue teased themes of the effects of sexual violence. This issue intimates a greater examination of the vary nature of what it would mean to become suddenly superhuman. These are all admirable aspirations for a monthly comic book, and it would be exciting and interesting to read… if those themes weren’t buried in hamfisted storytelling that seemingly goes nowhere and gratuitous ass shots and brokeback poses. This book serves up more ass on a consistent basis than a back alley Chinese food place… in more ways than one.

Look At What’s Happened To Me: Action Comics #7 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: Well Lois, we stand for spoilers, ruined story beats, and The American Way. Actually, those first two kind of are The American Way. Either way, you have been warned. Plus, your underpants are pink.

Action Comics #7 is, in many ways, a standard and classic Grant Morrison issue: a bunch of Big Ideas wrapped in one of the oldest ideas in the Superman mythos: fight Brainiac, and choose between his Earth and Kryptonian heritage. It is, in its own way, a perfect amalgam of what Morrison does best: turning old, hoary Silver Age story ideas that most of us laughed at during the Dark Age into something majestic and galactic in scope, all while perserving the humanity of the characters involved (It’s that last part Morrison sometimes punts on, but not here). In general, this is a good comic book.

And then there’s the fucking suit. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

Modern Retro: O.M.A.C. #7 Review

Considering that Keith Giffen’s art on O.M.A.C. is an obvious and unabashed tribute to Jack Kirby, if there is any justice in this world, we will eventually discover that Giffen’s pencils of Superman’s face in the opening of this book were redrawn by Al Plastino… or in a more modern turn of irony, Rob Liefeld.

Actually, having looked at that lede I just wrote, and at O.M.A.C. #7 itself again, I think doing something like that wouldn’t be a dose of justice, but something that co-writer Dan DiDio and Giffen might do just as a self-referential goof, for the sheer, lunatic thrill of it… which seems like the reasoning behind almost everything they do in this book. This is not a bad thing. O.M.A.C. has, since its launch in September, been many things: over the top, agressively retro, and almost deliberately schizo in its jumping from outlandish scenario to outlandish scenario every month. It has also been one of the most consistently entertaining comics of the first batch of the DC’s New 52.