Five In One, Or: No One Here Gets Out Alive: Fatale #11 Review

Most of the time, there’s only really two reasons that I can give people to pick up Fatale, written by Ed Brubaker with art by Sean Phillips, on an issue-by-issue basis rather than the trades. The first is that, even though up until now the stories in Fatale have been hugely decompressed, and arguably best read in one sitting as in a trade paperback reprint, buying individuals comics helps keep titles going and give you the chance to actually get a trade. But the second is the backmatter: essays by Jess Nevens- the guy who does the annotations for Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volumes – about the pulp horror stories, authors and magazines that form the influence of Fatale.

Yeah, well, forget all that shit, because neither one of them is true about Fatale #11. There is no backmatter in this issue, due to the vagaries of the holiday publishing schedule, and this issue isn’t really part of a long arc. Oh sure, the story features Josephine, the haunted femme fatale who makes men do anything she wants for some as-yet unknown reasons (although that rack probably helps, am I right, fellas? Hello? Is this thing on?), and we get to see Alfred Ravenscroft, the H. P. Lovecraft-inspired author of Elder Gods-style tales who has been a presence throughout the book until now, but for the most part, this issue is a one-and-done about how those two characters meet for the first time. And while it helps to know who these characters in order to fully enjoy the story, for once, it’s not utterly necessary. If you’ve been missing Fatale, this issue is a reasonable place to jump in for short money and get to know Josephine, her power and how she effects people, and some of the underpinnings of the greater story at large.

So if you’ve had any interest in checking out Fatale but haven’t gotten in on the ground floor, this is as good a place to give it a shot as any… but does that mean it’s any good?

Doesn’t Suck: Morbius The Living Vampire #1 Review

When I was a kid in the early, mid 1970s, I had an unreasonable phobia of vampires. During the mid 1990s, I had grown sick of watching Superman die and Spider-Man get cloned, so I tuned out of mainstream superhero fare in favor of Vertigo comics, and therefore missed Marvel’s era of Midnight Sons. In the mid 2000s, I never got caught up in the whole Twilight, sparkly vampire craze because I am a grown man who prefers the company of women.

The point is that, despite years of reading comics, I have no real personal history with the character of Morbius, The Living Vampire. Sure, I came across him a few times in Marvel Tales reprints and (I think) in one of those giant-sized The Spectacular Spider-Man Treasury Editions, but for the most part, for me, Morbius was one of those dingbats who showed up in Spider-Man now and again, wearing that stupid circus jumpsuit with the batwing armpits and lapels that would make John Travolta circa Saturday Night Fever weep like someone gave him a peek at his career between 1983 and 1994.

So I didn’t have a hell of a lot of anticipation for Morbius The Living Vampire #1, written by Joe Keatinge and drawn by Richard Elson; in fact, Amanda grabbed it as part of her pulls at our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me not to query the playing customers if they have anyone into whom they’d like me to drive my stake.  But she left it in the bathroom, so I gave it a shot, expecting what I vaguely remembered from the character back in the day (having, honestly, missed his star turn in The Amazing Spider-Man #699.1 last month due to holiday hecticness (Rob: You misspelled “drunken blackout.” –Amanda)): a mopey dipshit living in a sewer lab, howling at the walls at how tortured he is, punctuated by a fight with some supervillain whose head would, by law of averages, be on fire.

But it turns out it’s not like that at all. Instead, it’s a book about a vampire, but one that isn’t obsessed with vampires. Instead, it’s a surprisingly light – and not in a bad way – story about a guy who’s down on his luck and trying to navigate a rough situation. And that guy happens to be a vampire. And he, and the book as a whole, have a surprising sense of humor for a dude who used to run with Ghost Rider and eat rats. It’s a 21st century vampire story that is less The Vampire Diaries and more Zombieland, and it is a hell of a lot more fun than you’d think.

In A World…: New Avengers #1 Review

Christ, he thinks he’s making movies. That’s why I wasn’t completely satisfied by Avengers #1, and was actually kinda pissed off by New Avengers #1: they’re not really stories. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself here.

So let me start with a personal note to Jonathan Hickman: Hi, Jon? There is a difference between an action movie and a comic book. An action flick costs ten bucks and usually lasts between 100 and 140 minutes. A comic book costs just about half as much as a movie, but is 20 to 24 pages, and lasts about 15 minutes, or maybe 20 if you’ve eaten a lot of cheese and let yourself become dehydrated.

A full-screen title card in a movie usually takes maybe 10 seconds, or fifteen if the director is a bombastic prick – about 0.002 percent of a movie, or about 2 cents worth of screen time in a best-case scenario. In a comic? it’s two pages out of 22 – about nine percent of a comic, or about 36 cents worth of the book. And yes: I sat down with a calculator and did the math.

My point is: the big, movie-style title cards you insist on chucking into the first issue of each Avengers book you’ve taken over? Save that shit for the movies. Reading comics is more expensive than going the movies. If you want to write a movie? Call Avi Arad. If you’re writing comics? We’re paying by the page, champ. Don’t waste those pages on your James Cameron fantasies.

Okay, now that my pet peeve is out of the way, we can talk about New Avengers #1.

We Are The Walking Dead: Crossed: Badlands #20 Review

Editor’s Note: And one last review of the (few) comics of 12/26/2012 before the comic store opens with this week’s new books…

In the annals of zombie fiction, each imprint or subgenre meets a particular literary need. The Walking Dead allows Robert Kirkman to address the long-term effects of constant stress with no civilization on individuals of different types. George Romero uses his Night of The Living Dead stories to satire human pack behavior, such as mass consumerism, blind obedience to the military / industrial complex, and the compulsion to record life rather than living it.

And Avatar Comics’s Crossed: Badlands is generally here so comic creators can write and draw the most depraved and twisted shit they can possibly imagine.

I’m not kidding. Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows created, in their initial run of Crossed, a world where the “zombies” want to eat you, sure… but only after they fuck your holes, stab a few new holes and then fuck them, and then do the same to your friends, family, vague acquaintances and household pets, all in front of you if possible. And subsequent creators playing in the Crossed world have generally embraced this concept with both hands; David Lapham’s last two arcs in Crossed: Badlands revolved around a cowardly teenager who only finds his courage after mistakenly blowing away a teenaged girl he believed to be a zombie (and then fucking her), and then a literary salon that models itself on the old Hellfire Club… until they meet the Crossed, who show them what sexual adventurism really means, by way of the Zombie Cleveland Steamer (where you lie under a glass coffee table while a Crossed rips out your colon, takes it to Cleveland and then dorks it).

Crossed: Badlands is historically the place to go to produce the kind of stories that would get you a no-questions-asked Thorazine prescription if you told it to a psychiatric professional: fun if you like that sort of thing (and I usually do), but not where you look for social commentary or characterization beyond, “people sure do suck, don’t they?” So imagine my surprise when writer Si Spurrier and artist Raulo Caceres turned in a two-part arc about two damaged people, together for the wrong reasons and separated by the Crossed outbreak and their own selfishness, doomed to repeat their destructive cycle. This is a good one. Gross and intense, but good.

How Low Can You Go? – Amanda’s Picks For The Comic Book Low Points Of 2012

2012 is firmly at our backs. Congratulations, everyone. We made it.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but we had some real time encounters with abject, stinking failure in 2012 that make me all the more grateful to move on and away from it. From the weird decision to fire and then almost immediately rehire Gail Simone, to the baffling continued employment of Greg Land, to the need for some high profile comics creators to make odd and unnecessary comments about Batman’s sexuality because they can’t seem to stop giving Playboy interviews while in the thrall of a mescaline bender, there was plenty to color the comics enjoyment experience last year. And, after all the dust settled from the complaints of former employees about creator rights and other assorted Twitter bitching, sometimes, just sometimes, there were the comics themselves that were the problem.

Here are my picks for the top five comic book disappointments of 2012, after the jump.

Hangover: Rob’s Biggest Comic Disappointments of 2012

It is New Year’s Day, and thanks to about fifteen glasses alternating between Milwaukee’s and Lynchburg, Tennessee’s finest products last night, it feels like my brain has been taken over and occupied by Doctor Octopus. Or at least part of Doctor Octopus. Part of Doctor Octopus after a meal of bad sushi and piss-warm Chango. And to add insult to injury, I flipped on the TV this morning to be subjected to Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, which, as comic book movies go, certainly is one (man, Stringer Bell and Sailor Ripley sure have let themselves go).

Chuck on top of that steaming mess that there are no new comics until tomorrow, and nothing whatsoever apparently going on in the world of comics, and what we have is a new year that, so far, is… disappointing. And with that feeling in mind, and 2012 at our backs, it seems like as good an opportunity as any to revisit the biggest disappointments in comics and geek culture that occurred in 2012.

And given that the memory is so fresh, we might as well start with (although this list is in no particular order):

Because This Champagne Won’t Open Itself: Amanda’s Top Comic Book Picks For 2012

Happy New Year! Well, almost.

This year in comics has been pretty uneven for the Big Two. Marvel finally dragged its ass across the finish line to end the pain and suffering that was Avengers Vs. X-Men, leading to a reboot relaunch of most of its major titles under the imprint of something called Marvel Now! Whatever its actual intentions (sales!), Marvel Now!’s primary functions have to have an excuse to bring Jean Grey back as a teenager (hot!) and kill off Peter Parker (cold!). The jury is out with me on the whole concept right now. Meanwhile, DC has killed off many of its New 52 titles before they even made it to middle school (oh, O.M.A.C., we barely knew ye!). On the other hand, Scott Snyder has emerged as an architect of some vision with his “Death Of The Family” concept, which is currently impacting the Bat Family of books. I’m digging this story almost enough to forgive him for taking a break from Vertigo’s American Vampire…and Vertigo’s got enough problems right now.

So, where were the bright spots? Check out my picks, after the jump.

Dropping Balls: Rob’s Top 10 Comics of 2012

It is New Year’s Eve of the first complete year of the existence of Crisis On Infinite Midlives. We have all the comics we’re going to get in 2012, so it is time to publish my list of the best comics of the year… mostly because with no new comics, there isn’t much to review, and the biggest comics news we’re likely to get between now and Wednesday is likely to be “Frank Miller Publicly Intoxicated, Yells At ‘Hippies.’ Must Be Tuesday.”

So here’s my list; Amanda’s will appear later today. It is in no particular order, it encompasses everything from single issues to multi-issue story arcs to series that started in 2011 and ended this year. And I know what you’re thinking: “Rob,” you’re thinking, “Why don’t you organize things a little more? And use some consistent criteria for your list?” Well, because fuck you, that’s why. Look: it’s New Year’s Eve, and I intend to be recklessly intoxicated within about 90 minutes from the time I press the “publish” button.

So without further (or any) ado: here’s my list!

Talking About A Revolution: Aquaman #15 Review

“Aquaman doesn’t care about white people. Surly Irish drunken white people.”

-Me, after reading about the flooding of Boston in Aquaman #15.

Aquaman #15 is the second part of the Throne of Atlantis crossover (the first part was in this week’s Justice League #15), and the second issue in a row where the Justice League moves heaven and earth (well, mostly they move water, but you get my drift), in the aftermath of Atlantean tidal waves flooding three Eastern cities, to save Gotham and Metropolis… while allowing Boston to marinate in its own saltwater, spilled Guinness and seething, neverending rage at Manhattan. And while the Justice League does its level best to save everyone who isn’t in Boston, Aquaman’s brother is busy amassing an invasion force in Boston Harbor, with plans to sink the city to the bottom of the ocean – think Billy Joel’s Miami 2017, only instead of references to the Yankees and 42nd Street, it’s about the Red Sox and Lansdowne Street, and it’s not sung by some piano-playing wuss from Steinbrennerburg.

As a native Bostonian, I’m beginning to develop a persecution complex. Well, an even worse persecution complex.

But that kind of reaction will tend to happen when we’re in the second issue of a crossover event, and there is a lot of parallelization with the plot and events of the first issue, without very much forward motion or momentum from the first chapter in Justice League, although there is a pretty good cliffhanger at the end… even while Fenway Park is filled with Rays and Marlins – and not the good kinds from Tampa Bay or, well, wherever the hell in Florida the Marlins play what they pretend is baseball.

All About Mara – Review Of Mara #1

Ok, pop quiz hot shot: you’re a 17 year-old, wildly successful and famous celebrity athlete, you have recently taken on new sponsorship, and, at the opening volley of an exhibition game against a group of much younger girls, you manifest super powers. What do you do? What do you do?

The answer? Probably not what Mara Prince, the protagonist of writer Brian Wood’s new comics effort, Mara does. Well, not unless you, like Mara, are 17 years old and, therefore, are probably prone to making age related poor decisions. But, more on that later.

Wood’s story is set in a distant, or maybe not so distant, future. One in which athletes and their accomplishments are raised onto pedestals and worshiped with cult-like fervor. This athlete-centric culture has so permeated society that the world’s armies are now made up of soldiers who are the beneficiaries of endorsements and competitive contracts, drastically changing the nature of the near constant state of war in which the countries of this world find themselves, as soldiers fight for personal glory rather than country. In fact, this system has created “a multi-trillion dollar industry, producing perfect athletes and soldiers.” So, what happens when one of these products becomes a little too perfect?

Flags on the play, and spoilers, after the jump.