Throw Your Hat At Her And Die: Velvet #1 Review

When reading the first issue of Velvet, the new spy comic written by Ed Brubaker and drawn by Steve Epting, you can almost hear the creators saying, “You know what would be fucking awesome? If Miss Moneypenny was actually the baddest motherfucker who ever walked in or out of M’s office. Now pass that thing over here before it goes out, willya?”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Velvet is a spy comic set back in 1973, when the Cold War was running full blast, men were men, women were secretaries, and spies were dapper motherfuckers with laser wristwatches and cars that turned into submarines.

Which is, of course, utter bullshit. Everybody knows that there’s no such thing as James Bond – hell, even James Bond knows it, based on the relatively gadgetless Daniel Craig version we’ve had for the past few years. At this point, we can be pretty confident that real spies are either faceless geeks sucking up Internet traffic (Hi, NSA!) or large-jugged Russians with crappy Facebook cover identities. And besides: real spies work for real governments, which means hierarchy, bureaucracy and internal politics… and they know that you never fuck around with sharks with frikkin’ lasers when you can just blow your enemy’s head off with a shotgun.

So James Bond sure is fun, but he doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense in the real world if you stop to think about it longer that a minute or two. And Ed Brubaker clearly has stopped to think about it, because Velvet takes the world of James Bond, plugs it somewhat realistically into the real world of 1973, and turns things on their head by making Moneypenny the one that you really need to be concerned about.

And it gives us a meaty mystery: who killed X-14… and just who the hell is Velvet Templeton?

Eat The Rich: The Extinction Parade #3 Review

Editor’s Note: One last review of last week’s comics before the comic store opens…

There is an entire generation of Twilight fans who, after eight years of mooning over broody prettyboys who sparkle in the sunlight and chuck around pledges of eternal love like they’re trying to bubble to the top of a Ponzi Scheme based on the hard fucking of teenage girls, should be kneecapped and forced to read the third issue of The Extinction Parade, written by Max Brooks and drawn by Raulo Caceres.

There is also an entire generation of Keeping Up With The Kardashians fans who, after six years of squealing over the adventures of a yammering pack of B-grade starfucking sisters and their step-something who started life as an Olympic champion and is now visually indistinguishable from a C-List Batman villain, should be kneecapped and forced to read the third issue of The Extinction Parade.

This is because, even though the hook to get people on board with The Extinction Parade was that it was another angle on a zombie apocalypse by the guy who wrote the novel World War Z, it is instead really about vampires, who by dint of their eternal lives, are also the idle rich. And since Brooks is, as I am, a little too old to be a fan of either Twilight or the Kardashians, that means that he knows that vampires are irredeemable and detestable dicks.

The only downside is that this comic series places the vampires still in the Kardashians-on-the-news, Twilight’s-ruining-Comic-Con era of the zombie apocalypse. But the cracks in their perfect little lives are starting to show… and it is sweet.

Giant Naked Guy: Avengers Assemble #20 Review

Avengers Assemble #20 does a lot in 20 pages. First of all, it’s a rare one-and-done, which is refreshing in the middle of the Infinity event that has been going on for a couple of months but which sometimes makes me feel like we have always been at war with The Builders. Second, it gives a spotlight to Wonder Man, Wasp and Scarlet Witch, who have been inveterate second stringers recently (when one character has become a pacifist and another who just about a  year ago was valiantly fighting to remain dead. Third, it gives us a taste of what we can expect from the Great Terrigen Mist Release of 2013 (the fact that what we can expect is a bunch of people with new superpowers all reliving the first season of Heroes is beside the point). And finally, it wraps all of this in a relatable story about side characters who were damaged long before they were affected by the Terrigen Mist.

But this is not a perfect story. In order to fit everything into a single issue, writer Al Ewing has Wasp make a couple of quick and significant leaps in logic to get the story from Point A to Point B. Further, in order to balance Wonder Man’s out-front and obvious pacifism, Ewing contrasts it with a child gleefully stomping bad guys to death.

So there’s a lot here, some of which works and some of which doesn’t. But is does it work as a coherent whole?

Hunting Angels In The Gutters: Guardians of The Galaxy #7 Review

Since Guardians of The Galaxy #7 has the names Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli on the cover, I will start by saying yes, there are at least three double-paged layouts in this book where you need to stop what you’re doing (which will be enjoying the actual story) to decode whether you need to read page one and then page two, or across the spine from the top. The bad news is that this is still a storytelling technique that drives me bugfuck nuts.

The good news is that I have long since learned, when I see the names “Bendis” and “Pichelli” on the cover, to stop with every page turn and decode how to read the pages before continuing my story enjoyment. But still, even though I have learned to look for the layout doesn’t mean I like it. It’s like an SAT word problem, or a solid donkey punch: you don’t start loving it just because you know it’s coming.

Jesus, I have been writing comic reviews for more then two years, and I have never started one by poking at a technical element of the visual storytelling before. Which should go to show just how crazy the whole cross-spine layout makes me… but which also might make make it seem like all I have to say about it are technical nitpicks and “get off my lawn!” screeching about more modern storytelling techniques. But that’s really not the case.

Instead, Guardians of The Galaxy #7 is a comic book that will play for any Browncoat. It’s one of Bendis’s “let’s alll sit around a table talking” issues that let’s the reader spend some quality time with a tight crew of a small starship, cracking wise in the face of danger while simultaneously trying to negotiate with and size up a potential enemy. And with its cocky and wisecracking captain, warrior woman second in command, and gunslinging goon backing them up, it’s a stupid hat and a misguided hero’s ballad away from being an episode of Firefly.

And I like Firefly. So I had a lot of fun with this book.

Walking Through Mud: The Walking Dead #115 Review

This review is going to be colored by the fact that I am sick to fucking death of Negan and am more than ready for The Walking Dead to move on to something new.

We have been dancing with this character for fifteen months and his crew of douchebags for even longer than that, and for the entire time it has felt like the guy has one note, and writer Robert Kirkman has been playing it over… and over… and over, in an unending loop that should offend the mind of any self-respecting software developer:

while (bool negan.getIsAlive())
{
    negan.sexualizeBaseballBat();
    negan.leaves().
    List ricksPlanToBeatNegan = new List ( { “Take The Fight to Negan!” } );

    ricksPlanToBeatNegan.getIndex(n).execute();
    ricksPlanToBeatNegan.getIndex(n).setSuccess(false);
    negan.threatenMassViolence();
    n = n + 1;
}

See what months and months of reading about Negan has done to me? I develop software for my day job, and I just spent ten minutes trying to come up with a valid Java-ish method rather than contemplate 12 more issues with this fucking character.

But 12 issues should be the long and short of Negan, because The Walking Dead #115 signals the start of the major story arc All Out War, which should give us the final showdown between Rick’s and Negan’s people. And if the check that the title’s floating is any good at all, this showdown will be a straight-out fight, rather than these little insurrections and half-measures and bouts of oneupsmanship that have made reading The Walking Dead since July of (Jesus) 2012 feeling like walking through thick mud: you take forever and a ton of effort to take every step, and yet go nowhere fast.

So things should start speeding up… eventually. Because part one of All Out War is really more of the same.

Archie And Victims: Afterlife With Archie #1 Review

“Afterlife With Archie is my pick of the week,” said the owner of my local comic store, where they know me by name and generally ask me to stay right the hell away from the kids’ comics.

“…you gotta be shitting me, dude.”

“I am not kidding. It is not like any Archie comic you have ever seen…”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Goddamned Archie comic,” I muttered.

“…and no matter what you think, it is much darker than you think it is,” he said.

“It would almost have to be.”

“Go take a look,” he said, “Dig to the back of the stack and find one of the variant covers.”

I pawed past copies of your expected Archie-style cartoony fake horror covers and saw… something unexpected. “Jesus. How’d they convince Francesco Francavilla to do a cover for this book?”

“By letting him do the interiors, too.”

“…come again?”

“Check it out. Take a look at page three.”

I opened the book. “Um… is that a Francavilla splash page of Jughead handing Sabrina The Teenage Witch a dead fucking dog?” He nodded. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll try anything once.”

So I did try it. And allow me – a 42-year-old cynical and angry drunk who has just read an Archie comic book – to tell you this: Afterlife With Archie is pretty fucking good.

Sweet Boneless Jesus – Review Of Todd The Ugliest Kid On Earth #6

Ed. Note. This review starts off with spoilers. Ugly, ugly spoilers. And tits, but, mostly spoilers. You’ve been warned.

The world is not what it seems.

That is the message writer Ken Kristensen and artist M.K. Perker are trying to get across in Todd The Ugliest Kid On Earth – and they are succeeding.

Ever wonder why Charlie Rose is so damn popular? Arguably, because he is a national treasure (his words). Also? Satanist. No, scratch that. Satanist-In-Chief.

Yep. Kristensen and Perker have created a world where Rose is a Satanist hunted by a Groucho Marx lookalike, where tits are the mirror of the soul, and local bullies get their comeuppance during a Seven Minutes In Heaven session that rapidly devolves into their own, personal Crying Game. And in the middle of it all?

Todd. The Ugliest Kid On Earth.

Interested? You should be.

The Present Ain’t What It Used To Be: The Shadow Now #1 Review

Editor’s Note: Who knows what spoilers lurk in the hearts of men? Oh, I’ve used that one before? Well, I’ll email you a full refund.

Back in the mid-1980s, Howard Chaykin rebooted The Shadow for the 20th Century with his Blood & Judgment miniseries for DC Comics. And that story was a classic, firmly dropping Lamont Cranston into what was then the present, including MAC-10s instead of Colt .45s, a pastel pallate, and, being a Howard Chaykin book, more tits and ass than you can shake a stick at. And even though the book came out when I was 15 years old, long before the widespread adoption of the Internet, I categorically deny that I ever shook my stick at it. But I digress.

Well, that story took place 27 years ago, which means it’s time for another reboot, because God knows that unless someone comes up with a rational explanation for it, you can never allow a comic book character to not age in real time. That’s why Batman ‘s latest wonderful to is a colostomy bag. Jesus, I’m losing the thread again…

Anyway, writer David Liss and artist Colton Worley are tasking themselves with the same goals that Chaykin had back in 1986: bring The Shadow into the present day. And how would a dude carrying a couple of guns and an adenoid laugh fare in the world of the Internet, easily-available pornography, and where the evil that lurks in the hearts of men is leveled off by Adderal and Xanax?

Not nearly as well as you’d hope, actually.

Weaponized Cthuhlu: Avengers: Endless Wartime Review

Avengers: Endless Wartime, the new original graphic novel written by Warren Ellis with art by Mike McKone, is, for all intents and purposes, an effective sequel or side tale about The Avengers from the Joss Whedon movie. It is a sequel to The Avengers that, unlike Marvel Studios, has no rights issues or special effects budget constraints to deal with, and therefore can include fan favorite characters, like Wolverine and Captain Marvel, that the movies can’t. And it is a sequel that is printed on really shitty paper.

Seriously: I got my copy shrinkwrapped and therefore never opened before I got it back to the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, and the pages in the front and back third of the book were wrinkled to hell and back. And on top of that, a couple of panels had printing errors that smudged the shit out of the lettering. It’s not the worst thing in the world – it doesn’t make the book unreadable or anything, and I lost all my resale value, defects or not, the minute I stripped the shrink wrap to read the thing – but when you’re dropping $25 clams on a piece of shelf porn, you expect the thing to be printed at least as well as it would have been had it been broken into a six-issue miniseries. Your mileage may vary, and God knows you won’t spend the full $25 if you buy the thing off of Amazon or something, but I bought it at my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop threatening to demand $25 if they don’t let me strip off my shrink wrap for a close inspection.

But let’s forget about the printing issues and go back to the story, which takes place pretty much outside of current Avengers continuity, includes all the players from the Avengers movie – and they are far more recognizable as the characters from the movies than they are most modern versions of the characters in the comics –  and has the global scale of a major motion picture. And while it feels like there are a couple of stories jammed together that make things a little confusing now and again, it’s packed with familiar character notes, catchphrases, and Warren Ellis dialogue. Dialogue that would jeopardize a PG-13 rating if it actually was a movie.

Back On The Chain Gang: The Trial of The Punisher #1 Review

It turns out I missed The Punisher. Go figure.

Sure, we’ve had a monthly dose of The Punisher in Thunderbolts, but I think we all know that, as fun as that book sometimes is, that’s not really The Punisher. Sure, The Punisher is a member of the Marvel Universe, and we have seen him work briefly with Spider-Man and Daredevil over the years… but The Punisher doesn’t really work with anyone. Sure, it’s a guy named Frank Castle with a machine gun, but it’s not really The Punisher. The Punisher works alone; he sits in a grimy apartment or in some van with a pile of guns and a list of names – a lot of those names are crossed out already, but names – and when he’s gone, you only know he was there from the pile of corpses and shell casings. You certainly don’t find Frank Castle’s name on some government paycheck dated any later than 1969.

Greg Rucka knew how The Punisher was supposed to be, and that’s part of why he left his run on the book. And it’s been a while since we’ve seen that version of The Punisher… but we’ve got a short dose of it now.

The Trial of The Punisher #1, written by Marc Guggenheim with art by Leinil Yu, is The Punisher that I’ve been missing for a while. Not that this team has Punisher running around in a skull shirt smoking bad guys, but instead they have him in lockup, awaiting trial for the murder of an Assistant District Attorney, with criminals all around him and not a single teammate in a red and black spandex costume in sight.

And it is more refreshing than I thought it was gonna be.