Yup, 62. I counted them.

Black Kiss 2 is the sequel to a 1988 story about the hunt for the Vatican’s pornography and the transsexual vampires who stole it, so you should have some idea of what reading this story entails. At my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to remember that Juggs isn’t a comic book, they kept Black Kiss 2 #1 behind the counter, and at this college town comic store in Godless, liberal Boston, they never keep books behind the counter. “I normally don’t do this,” the owner told me, “But it’s summertime, and I couldn’t risk some kid coming in, finding it, and bringing in all his little buddies for a cheap thrill.” So I asked him for a copy and some Vaseline. But I digress.

The point is that Black Kiss 2 isn’t gonna be for everyone, or if fact, anyone if they’re younger than, say, 16 years old (by then, they’re old enough to get around any nanny software on their computers, and have seen all this stuff anyway). It is sexually explicit, and considering it is a story about demons and vampires, we’re not talking airbrushed Playboy sexually explicit. It’s not Two Girls, One Cup, but you should ask yourself how you feel about tentacle porn before you put on your raincoat and sunglasses and ask your friendly comic retailer for a copy.

Editor’s Note: Does he spoil? Listen bub: he’s got Jack Daniels infected blood!

If you are a Spider-Man fan, you will find Avengers Vs. X-Men #9 to be about the most satisfying issue of the crossover event so far. It hammers home his philosophy of “With great power comes great responsibility” without actually saying the words for a change, it plays to his strengths as a character, and it allows this street-level hero to have a distinct and concrete impact on a cosmic-level story in a way that is true to the character, and satisfying for people who love him.

It also has a marital collapse. And it sets up the savage beating of one of the biggest douchecanoes in modern superhero comics. So there’s not a lot of downside here.

When I was six or seven years old, I had a Power Records LP…

(Note to Generation Y: “LP” stands for “long playing record.” It was a big piece of vinyl that sounds were recorded on. Think a CD, only bigger and with shittier sound, no matter what line of horseshit Jack White tries to sell you about vinyl sounding “warmer.” Crackles and skips are not features, they are bugs,)

(Note to Millennials: “CD” stands for “compact disc.” It was a small piece of plastic that sounds were recorded on. Think an MP3, only one you had to spend all your beer money on in college back in 1991 if you wanted to own any music. Now all of you: get the fuck off my lawn.)

Sorry about that. Anyhoo, I had the Power Records LP of The Six Million Dollar Man, which included a retelling of Steve Austin’s origin, according to the television series. Which is a story that anyone old enough to associate the “bah-nah-nah-nah-nah” bionic sound effect with something other than Chevy Chase doing putts in Caddyshack knows: Steve Austin is a test pilot in a plane crash, and Oscar Goldman and Rudy Wells…

(Note to Gen X’ers and drunken comics Website editors: There is a thing on the Internet called YouTube where everything you ever loved as a child has been collected, for free. And it allows you to embed those things in your own Website! So quit chasing those little bastards off your lawn and, you know, do that,)

I have always had mixed feelings about Mark Millar’s and John Romita Jr’s Kick-Ass. On one hand, I feel like it has a tendency to go for over-the-top, nihilistic violence as a simplistic deconstruction of the superhero genre. Which, while effectively demonstrating that the concept of superheroes in the real world would be somewhat ineffective and silly, means that we’ve gotten a lot of likable characters getting their faces kicked in so that Millar can try to make a point. It doesn’t take a genius to point out that a dipshit with a stick in a spandex suit would lose to the business end of a .45, and after a while, seeing it happen over and over again just feels fucking mean. There’s no great joy or enlightenment in seeing a costumed adventurer you’ve grown to like  getting stabbed and beaten to death; it just feels like the comic writing equivalent of having your head jammed in a junior high school toilet while a jock bellows, “Superheroes are fucking stupid, wuss!”

The best part of the Kick-Ass universe has been Hit-Girl, who is as close to an actual superhero as exists in this world. And even granting that the character was probably only created to show that a kid sidekick would grow up to be hopelessly warped, and that any really effective superhero would need to resort to extreme violence in order to be in any way effective, she provided the only real and exciting superhero action in any of the Kick-Ass miniseries. And while we are only in the second issue of the Hit-Girl miniseries, and while it’s probably safe to say that, as with Kick-Ass and Kick-Ass 2, everything will end in tears, that particular book is simply action-packed, interesting, and just fucking fun. At least, for now.

On one hand, Green Lantern #11 is an encouraging sign that the book might be returning to its glory days of  the spectacular Blackest Night crossover from a couple years ago… almost literally. We’ve got the return of that crossover’s villain Black Hand, he’s got his Black Lantern ring back and he’s bringing the dead back, getting ready to take over the world again. It’s exciting, even though it’s a story that maybe we’ve seen before.

On the other hand, Green Lantern is a sign that the book might be returning to another story from the past. That story is Army of Darkness.

This issue is very much a transition story, wrapping up the recent origin of the Indigo Tribe while laying the groundwork for the upcoming Third Army event, of which it appears that the returning Black Hand will be a big part of. Sinestro has been released from the thrall of the Indigo Lanterns, which is a shame, since on an infinite timeline we’d have see a lettering mistake having Indigo Sinestro muttering, “Nok. Kok. Nok kok. Kok nok. Kok.” Yes, I am emotionally twelve years old, why do you ask?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Whatever happened to The American Dream? Spoiler alert!

So The Comedian started the Vietnam War. Must be Tuesday.

The Comedian #2 is better than the first issue, but then again, it almost had to be. Seeing writer Brian Azzarello having Eddie Blake simpering around the Kennedys and doing things that blithely and utterly flew in the face of some of Alan Moore’s existing story canon were almost more than this old school Comedian fan could bear. This issue improves on the ruins of the first, by getting The Comedian the fuck away from politicians and into the jungle of pre-Gulf of Tonkin Vietnam, allowing the character to show a little more of the savagery and moral ambiguity that we’d come to expect from the original Watchmen.

Of course, it also include’s Azzarello’s apparent burning compulsion to put The Comedian at the center of every major event in American history that has occurred since 1939.  In the first issue, it was the death of Marilyn Monroe, and here it’s the Ali-Liston fight and the literal beginning of the Vietnam War. If The Comedian hadn’t been killed in the original Watchmen, I’d be afraid that Azzarello would end issue 6 with Blake at the discovery of the Higgs Boson snarling, “You’re turning into a flake, Doc.” Actually, that’s probably a hasty argument; after that first issue, I’m not yet convinced that Azzarello won’t decide that the murder of The Comedian isn’t really Watchmen canon. But I digress.

A couple of weeks ago, I sat through a handful of Marvel panels at SDCC and learned…not very much. Well, at least not a lot about anything related to the assorted members of the Avengers or X-Men – which was weird, what with the whole panel dedicated to them and their “summer blockbuster” event (yes, those were the, somewhat paraphrased, words of Marvel EIC Axel Alonso). At the AVX panel, much of the time was dedicated to cheerleading, with only modest time devoted to characters and titles. Most of those titles discussed ended up being related to books that will be released post AVX (Marvel NOW!). If Alonso sees the culmination of each year’s storylines as leading into a big summer time event, you’d think he might take a cue from the the actual “blockbusters” (hint – they’re often in Hall H or Ballroom 20 and you have to line up for them the day before…not waltz into them 10 minutes before they start.). Maybe have a panel that is balanced with more writers and artists on it than editorial. Talk about some of the individual books, both team and solo, of characters involved in your “summer blockbuster” in the here and now, rather than in, ahem, Marvel NOW. I’m sure it wouldn’t have killed Arune Singh to maybe take some time out from saying “How many of you love {insert event or movie}?” and get one of the architects on speaker phone, the way he did for the Amazing Spider-Man And Other Stuff That Was Marginally Related To Spider-Man panel we attended the next day. But, who knows? Rumor has it the entire staff of Marvel has to share a single bathroom in their building. Maybe they make him pay for his own long distance?

But what does this actually have to do with Wolverine #309? You’ll find out, with spoilers.

There are many comics fans who just don’t get into Marvel’s X-Titles, and I am one of them. Which is a strange thing for a 35-year inveterate superhero comic geek to admit, but the team, and its 927 spinoff teams, generally just never grabbed me. You’ve got a bunch of heroes with no origin story beyond, “born funny,” a huge and nearly impenetrable backstory, and two of its lead characters – Professor X and Cyclops – are simply unlikable cocks. And considering the applause poll conducted at Marvel’s SDCC Avengers Vs. X-Men panel that fell squarely on the Avengers side, a lot of people of there agree with me. Not an issue of that book goes by without my deeply wishing that we eventually see Spider-Man yank Cyclops’s eyes out with some well-placed webbing, turning the prick into a normal person, qualified only to be the biggest douche selling pencils out of a tin cup.

With that said, I am a huge fan of Peter David’s X-Factor. I don’t know whether it’s because the team is smaller and easier to keep track of, or because the characters spend more time in small scale, street-level action than in preventing apocalypses (Seen Madrox taking on Ms. Marvel in Avengers Vs. X-Men recently?), or because the characters feel relatable and human than, say, a dude whose father is a Starjammer and whose girlfriend, depending on decade, either reads minds and turns into diamond or destroys entire planets… although I should be able to relate, because think I dated the second one. But I digress.

And X-Factor #240 is a perfect place to get your feet wet in the title. It’s a one-and-done, focusing on Layla Miller (who is one of the most interesting characters in the book), and examining her power – she “knows stuff” about the future – in a way that would be perfect for explaining Dr. Manhattan’s point of view if Alan Moore’s characterization allowed Manhattan to have free will. Free will and a nice rack, but you get my point.

Simply put, and without question: Silk Spectre #2 is the best issue of Before Watchmen so far.

It does everything you’d expect from a Watchmen prequel book, particularly one that isn’t endorsed by the original creators: it follows the original book’s visual, nine-panel format, it pays homage to Moore’s original writing style of having the words directly reflect the visuals in the panel, and it expands the Watchmen universe by exploring niche, side subjects that it would never occur to me to wonder about until I saw those explorations here. By mining the original work’s edges while paying tribute to its written and drawn style, it does what a prequel should do: build upon the original without superceding it. It is the first Before Watchmen book that I plainly and simply liked.

Since Rob and Amanda are off in San Diego, risking life and limb dodging furries and trying desperately to avoid the dreaded ConSARS, they’ve asked me to write up my thoughts on Kirkman’s centennial issue of the Walking Dead.

Last night I caught up on the last several issues of The Walking Dead in preparation my review of issue 100, and, after reading through the past few books I was disappointed to find:

  • Carl still won’t stay in the fucking house
  • A stranger appears with a too-good-to-be-true offer from a nearby community
  • This community, it could change everything, they could have lives again!
  • Rick opts to tie up the stranger instead of putting an e-fence shock collar on Carl

It reminded me of daytime soaps and their lather, rinse, repeat storylines; though here it’s even less surprising when a character comes back from the dead. As I finished up #99, I found myself growing tired of the repetitiveness, and yet still eager to read issue 100, hoping for an interesting turn rather than more of the same.

Spoilers Ahead