You Damn Fool! You’re More Useless Than Aquaman: Justice League #15 Review

Since last year’s New 52 relaunch, Geoff Johns has made it his personal mission to rehabilitate Aquaman’s reputation. Which is a somewhat Quixotic task, since Aquaman never had much of a reputation to begin with. I remember years ago, when superhero Underoos were finally released for sale, my mom brought me to the store late enough that all that were left were Aquaman Underoos… and I told her that I would rather parade around the schoolyard in tightie-whities than suffer the indignity of having to pretend to be Aquaman. I was 28. But that’s not the point.

But hey, everyone has an unlikely dream that they harbor deep in their hearts, and I don’t begrudge Johns his, even though I don’t think he’s quite delivered on it thus far. Hey, I have the secret fantasy that someday I, a bloated and drunken 41-year-old, can smack the home run that wins the Boston Red Sox their third World Series victory since 1918 despite never having played even Little League baseball, so I’m not gonna rank Johns out too much for his dream to make Aquaman cool, despite it arguably having a lower chance at success than mine.

After fifteen months of chasing the dragon, Johns has begin phase two of his unlikely Aquaman resuscitation (actually, given Aquaman’s inability to carry his own book for longer than seven years despite more than 70 years of history, perhaps “presuscitation” is a better word) by making Aquaman the focus of a big Justice League event, Throne of Atlantis. So finally, Johns has his main chance to give Aquaman some relevance, not only in his own title but in the DC Universe proper, by making the poor, fishfucking sonofabitch the focus of a story… but for it to work, the story better be a good one.

Sticky Fingers: Avenging Spider-Man #15.1 Review

Editor’s Note: With great spoilers must come great responsibility. More or less.

Okay, so Peter Parker is “dead,” and Otto Octavius is Spider-Man now. Whether you agree with how Dan Slott did it or not, it’s the way things are for the time being. And given that Spider-Man appears regularly in four different comic books that I can think of off the top of my head, if you have any intention of following Marvel Comics – particularly the Avengers books – for the next year or so, you’re going to need to come to terms with this new Spider-Man, and get to know what Otto’s like now that he’s Spider-Man, and what makes him tick. You know, besides being suddenly able to walk, see his own junk without a mirror, and leer at Mary Jane (and make no mistake, it will just be leering; if you follow Dan Slott’s Twitter feed, you know that he’s bought himself enough trouble without setting himself up to be confronted by women in red wigs at every comic convention, asking him why he supports date rape via deception in his comics).

Marvel Editorial, possibly realizing that killing Peter on December 26th and leaving readers to wait two weeks for the debut of The Superior Spider-Man on January 9th would only give the most rankled ones more opportunity to figure out how to plant hooker toes on Slott and then dime the police, made the decision to give us the first real taste of the new Spider-Man in Avenging Spider-Man #15.1, released this week in parallel with The Amazing Spider-Man #700.

So: what do we get in our first full issue of Doc Ock as Spider-Man? Scenes of a former villain embracing the responsibility that comes with his newfound power? Or does he frantically masturbate to Pete’s iPhone gallery of Mary Jane pictures before going to the barber, handing over his favorite bowl and saying, “Just follow this”?

End of The (Web) Line: Amazing Spider-Man #700 Review

Editor’s Note: Better Yet, with my unparalleled genius — and my boundless ambitions — I’ll be a better Spoiler-Man than you ever were.

I hated Star Trek: Generations. Yes, I know this is a review of The Amazing Spider-Man #700, but just bear with me for a second.

The climax of Generations featured the death of Captain Kirk. If I’m remembering correctly (and if I’m not, screw it; I’m not watching that pile of shit again), a bunch of scaffolding collapsed on Kirk, killing him slowly due to internal injuries. “It was… fun,” Kirk said. “Fuck this bullshit,” I said.

The problem wasn’t that Kirk died. The problem was the way that Kirk died. Sure, he went down fighting evil, and he did it even knowing that no one would ever know that he did what he did, and that’s fine… but there is no way on God’s Green Earth that James Tiberius Kirk dies due to shitty construction and a bad step. It is wrong, and it is anti-climactic.

You want to kill Jim Kirk? There is only one way he dies: he goes down with the ship.

With that let’s turn an eye to The Amazing Spider-Man #700.

There is a lot in this comic book that writer Dan Slott does reasonably well. He shows two mortal enemies locked in battle, and demonstrates that at least in terms of intelligence, they are pretty evenly matched. He clearly spent some time thinking about Internet gutter wits (Hey Mom! I’m on the Internet!) looking for plot holes and preemptively plugging them, and gives a reasonable explanation for how and why the combatant who survives will act in the way he must for the ongoing conceit to even remotely have legs. And he gave himself an out for the new status quo… which I think we all know isn’t really the new normal. After all, let’s remember that , in the past five or six years, Marvel has killed and resurrected Captain America and Thor twice each. Big name characters in the Marvel Universe get killed and rise from the grave so often they make Jesus look like D-Man.

And yes, someone does die here, however temporarily. And Slott does his best to make that death emotional and moving, and succeeds up to a point. Problem is, that death doesn’t feel earned… and it is the equivalent of dying in a Goddamned scaffolding collapse.

So who dies, and is it all worth it? Well, let’s talk about that after the jump, with one warning: after that jump, there will be spoilers.

Happy Boxing Day – Review Of Joe Palooka #1

Editor’s Note: And one last review of the comics of 12/19/2012 before the comic store open…

From the 1920s and well into the middle of the 20th century, American comics press had a tradition of popularizing idealized characters as heroes – hard bitten detectives like Dick Tracy, plucky orphans who make good like Little Orphan Annie, and tenacious fighters with tender hearts like Joe Palooka.

Created by cartoonist Ham Fisher, Joe Palooka had a very successful run as a syndicated comic strip from 1930 until 1984. At its peak, it ran in 900 newspapers and spawned radio spots, a television show and a movie. The American public continues to demonstrate a soft spot for its fighters, to which the popularity and critical acclaim of such movies as Million Dollar Baby and The Fighter can attest. Even as straight up boxing has moved from weekend afternoon sports coverage on networks to cable and pay-per-view programming, viewers still can get their pugilism fix through any of a number of mixed martial arts programs, like Ultimate Fighting Championship or StrikeForce. So, it’s no surprise that characters inspired by MMA fighters are finding their way back into the comics medium, as with Blair Butler’s 2011 series Heart.

Joe Antonacci, a veteran ringside announcer of boxing and MMA matches, now owns the trademark to Joe Palooka and has rebooted the character as an ongoing comic book series. Joe Palooka, also known in this new book as Nick Davis, is an up and coming MMA fighter with a background in bare knuckle boxing from his time growing up as a child of migrant farm workers. The story has been mapped out by the creative team of Antonacci, with creative partners Matt Triano and Mike Bullock. Bullock also scripted the issue. Art is handled by Fernando Peniche with Bob Pedroza on colors.

So, how does Joe Palooka hold up to his modernization?

Our hero’s spoiler filled origins, after the jump!

Django Adapted: Django Unchained #1 Review

When DC Comics announced at San Diego Comic-Con that they were planning to release a comics adaptation of Quentin Tarantino’s movie Django Unchained, which is out in theaters today, I was not particularly enthusiastic, even though I am a Tarantino fan from years back.

Why? Well, picture the first fifteen minutes of Pulp Fiction. Now try to picture that quarter hour as a comic book. Hell, imagine it as a major event comic with A-list talent; let’s say they got Frank Miller to do the art, because after all, the man knows how to draw people in black and white suits. What do you think that comic book would look like? That’s right: it would be 75 pages long with half of those pages being word balloons. And the visuals would be of three different angles of two guys sitting quietly in a car, giving Miller all kinds of unexpected free time to shriek at hippies to get off his lawn. And we know that those would be some killer word balloons, but as a comic book? Not the most exciting-sounding four-color experience. Frankly, if you pitched a comic issue about two guys in a car talking about cheeseburgers and the metric system without using the name “Tarantino,” even Brian Michael Bendis would say, “Meh; sounds kinda… talky“.

So at first glance, a Tarantino comic sounds like a rough idea on its face. However, Django Unchained is a western, which at least implies a certain amount of action and visual dynamism… but to play Devil’s Advocate, Pulp Fiction was a crime movie, which would also imply some adrenaline pounding, but which really only would provided it during the, well, adrenaline pounding. So how does this comic play? An ultra-literate Jonah Hex shoot ’em up? Or, to paraphrase Eric Cartman: a couple of gay cowboys talking about pudding?

Passing Judgement – Review Of Judge Dredd #2

I am behind the times where Judge Dredd is concerned. When the comic was coming out in strip form back in the late seventies and eighties in the British publication 2000 A.D., I was an ocean away. Also, I was 7 (at least at the start of it). I managed to miss both movie versions of it, which, from what I hear, is probably a good thing. Why Sylvester Stallone would’ve been cast to play an iconic British comic hero seems bizarre, but it was the 90s and a lot of crimes against comic books were happening -so why should their treatment in a movie be that much more surprising? As far as Karl Urban is concerned – well, I know he was Bones McCoy in the Star Trek reboot. I liked him in that, but not enough to go to Judge Dredd 3D. I’m ok with that.

IDW currently has the rights to Judge Dredd and is two issues into a new run, written by Duane Swierczynski. I picked up issue #2 with no context, having missed the first one. If you’re like me and have no background on the series, Judge Dredd is a futuristic tale, set in the dystopian society of Mega-City One. Joseph Dredd is a Judge; Judges are cops who also impose sentence on their perps. This issue seems to be as much about what the system asks of its participants as it is about the characters. The comic is split into two stories by Swierczynski, “Cover Me”, with art by Nelson Daniel, and “The Good Parts”, with art by Brendan McCarthy.

So, for a reader with no grounding in the series, who is also starting late to the party, what’s the verdict?

My findings, riddled with spoilers, after the jump.

Entry Portal: Locke & Key: Omega #2 Review

I hadn’t read any of Locke & Key, written by Joe Hill and drawn by Gabriel Rodriguez, until the Grindhouse one-shot came out back in September. At the time, I told myself that I hadn’t tried it because the word was it had a bunch of backstory and mythology crossing four already-released trade paperbacks worth of material, and between my heavy take of weekly comics and trying to run a comics Web site, I simply didn’t have the time or energy to throw myself into a deep horror tale that, based on titles alone, looked like another Lovecraft knockoff – sure, I loves me some Lovecraftian stories, but I think I’ve established I have little patience for bad ones. So why run the risk?

That was the reason that I told myself. Turns out the real reason I wasn’t reading Locke & Key is because I was a fucking idiot.

Locke & Key is a spectacular horror story, one that covers twenty years and more of mythology, yes, but which focuses on a small group of well-rounded characters in a limited, generally familiar setting – you know, minus the weird house and its funky magic keys. It has Lovecraftian elements, yes, but it also has so much more, and by keeping the people affected down to a small group, it accentuates the danger by making it easy to empathize with those in the thick of it. Yes, Locke & Key is all one big six-volume story (other than that Grindhouse one-shot), and yes, because of that, it is difficult to just grab an issue to understand who people are and what is happening to them, but four of those volumes are available in affordable trade paperback, with the fifth just out in hardcover… and if you’re anything like me, by the time you finish the fourth book, you’ll happily drop the extra few bucks to get the fifth right fucking now.

The sixth and final Locke & Key volume, Omega, is being released in normal comic book form right now; the second issue dropped on Wednesday. And while I have been digging it, I didn’t review the last month’s first issue because it is a late chapter in one big story. Which meant that if you hadn’t read any of the earlier issues, there wasn’t a hope in hell that a new reader would know what the hell was going on or why. And the same is true for this week’s second issue, but I’m going to review and recommend it anyway, even for new readers. Because even though new readers won’t know who the punk kid in the wedding dress is, or why there’s a naked child ghost wandering around with no wang, or if the black woman muttering “White. Stop. Dodge” is in the mental hospital due to a hideous Bombardment accident, I can guarantee they will lock onto the character of Rufus Whedon. And if the heart and cleverness with which Hill has embued this character doesn’t give you faith that maybe it’s worth starting Locke & Key from the beginning to see what he’s done with these other people you don’t know? Maybe comics really aren’t the hobby for you.

Questionable Mental States: Daredevil #21 Review

Editor’s Note: Kingpin left me with ten spoilers in my pocket. I found a comics Web site that makes change.

Whether purposefully or accidentally, Marvel and writer Mark Waid have put themselves into a difficult position by putting the first chronological appearance of The Superior Spider-Man – that is, whoever Spider-Man will wind up being after the events of next week’s The Amazing Spider-Man #700 – into this week’s Daredevil #21.

Because with all the hype and anticipation surrounding what will happen with Spider-Man (as an example: once we published an article about the leak to the Internet of the ending to The Amazing Spider-Man #700, our Web traffic doubled… and we didn’t even publish the actual spoilers), what he does and how he acts in Daredevil #21 will be almost as important to readers as the story about Ol’ Hornhead. It’s kinda like casting the Octomom or John Wayne Bobbit in a porno flick; you’ll get a lot of rubberneckers not watching the thing for its intended purpose.

So even though Spider-Man’s appearance in Daredevil #21 makes complete and total sense with regards to the greater story – not only the story of some still unknown party trying to drive Matt nuts, but of Matt’s conscious decision to lighten up that goes back to Waid’s earliest issues – his appearance here, before the resolution of the current arc in Spider-Man’s home title, means the issue (not the story; there is a distinction there) has a massive, nearly crippling distraction that I doubt Waid originally intended. It makes the reading of this individual issue, during this particular point in pre-Amazing Spider-Man #700 time, an almost schizophrenic experience, where what Spider-Man does and says in two pages is almost, if not more, important to the comic reader than the actual Daredevil story in the preceding 18 pages.

So I’m gonna review it that way: in two parts.

Stark Decisions: Iron Man #4 Review

Editor’s Note: You want my property? You can’t have it. But I did you a big favor: I’ve successfully privatized world spoilers! What more do you want?

Jesus, there’s a lot of Lovecraft to go around in this week’s comics.

Iron Man #4, written by Kieron Gillen with art by Greg Land, is ostensibly part four of a five part opening arc by the new creative team, but in reality is a crackling, easy-to-follow one-and-done featuring everyone’s favorite hard-headed, pragmatic engineer against the thirteen brides of who is clearly Cthuhlu, The Elder God and Black Infinite.

Ah, I’m just kidding. Of course it’s not clearly Cthuhlu. It’s possible that it’s Dagon or Zoth-Ommog.

Actually, since this is a Marvel comic, and therefore the only masters of the sea that any writer can guarantee the reader has heard of either have pointy ears and wings for feet, or else an orange shirt and unlawful carnal knowledge of sea horses, it’s probably Cthuhlu.

The Emancipation Of Harley – Review Of Suicide Squad #15

Fifteen issues into various DC “New 52” titles and I have to tell you – if you’d have asked me who would still be standing as the long term writer of a title at the end of 2012, I’m not sure I would’ve named Adam Glass over Scott Snyder or Gail Simone. Snyder’s Swamp Thing was an unexpected initial hit, although its sales have been in decline lately; Simone’s Batgirl, despite being uneven in places, was garnering solid sales. According to Comics Beat, last October Batgirl #13 sold 50,074 issues versus Suicide Squad #13’s 27,644. So, what gives? Why does Glass continue to get the green light?

After the jump, we puzzle out the nature of sales, love, and rubber chickens – with spoilers!