They’ll Fix You. They Fix Everything: Robocop: Last Stand #1 Review

Robocop is awesome. Sure, there are a lot of questionable moments in the franchise, like parts of Robocop 2… and all of Robocop 3… plus the entirety of the Robocop animated series… not to mention every instant of the live-action Robocop TV series that was created to keep Orion Pictures from being sold for corporate parts in the mid 90s… but that original Paul Verhoeven flick? I can watch that all day.

Frank Miller, too, is awesome… or at least he was once. Sure, there have been a lot of questionable moments, like Holy Terror… and his film adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit… and whenever he goes anywhere near a device that has an Ethernet port… but all those stories like The Dark Knight Returns, and Give Me Liberty, and Batman: Year One? Miller in the late 80s, early 90s, I can read all day.

Now, Miller famously wrote the original screenplays for Robocop 2 and Robocop 3 in the late 80s, before various studio executives and directors ripped the things apart to turn them into the respective okay and awful movies they became. And for a long time through the 90s, those screenplays were kind of legends in the comics world: Miller, working when he was at the top of his game, on a genre franchise that exploded into a classic right out of the gate.

Almost ten years ago, Avatar Press released an adaptation of Miller’s Robocop 2 screenplay, with a comic script by Two Guns writer Steven Grant, that was pretty solid as I recall, and was a hell of a lot darker than the actual movie. But that still left Miller’s Robocop 3 screenplay floating around out there. And in the meantime, Dynamite Comics got their hands on the Robocop license and put out some books that, frankly, made Robocop 2 look like Godfather 2.

However, the license has now moved to Boom Studios, who has put the band back together with Robocop: Last Stand, an adaptation of Miller’s Robocop 3 screenplay again adapted to comics by Steven Grant. So we’ve got an 80s Robocop story based on an 80s story by Frank Miller. On paper, it’s everything I ever wanted when I was 20 years old… but the question is: is it a classic like I always hoped? Or is it another wretchedly disappointing Robocop comic like every one I’ve read since we started this Web site?

The answer is… neither, really. But it is pretty damn good

Write What You Know, And Then Stop: Wolverine: In The Flesh Review

Editor’s Note: And one last quick review before the comic stores open today…

When I was younger, I was a professional stand-up comedian. I started almost exactly 20 years ago, performing for the first time in the back of a shitty bar called Headliners off of the main drag in Buckhead, Georgia (it’s not there anymore) in mid-August, 1993, hundreds of miles away from anyone who knew me, so that if I completely sucked and couldn’t face doing it anymore, no one would know that I stunk up the joint.

Well, I did completely suck, but I got better over the course of years, going from shitty college bar open mike to the back rooms of Chinese restaurants 20 minutes off of any highway in northern New England, honing my craft enough to reach the point where I could do some opening in bigger rooms in Boston. It took me years to get there… and during that time, there was nothing that pissed me off more than hearing that some bubblegumming fallen D-List celebrity or maybe some scandal celebrity try to string out their 15 minutes of fame by trying a stand-up.

Year after year, I’d hear it: Kato Kaelin was doing stand-up! Screech from Saved By The Bell was doing a weekend at the Comedy Palace! John Wayne Bobbit was doing two appearances at – wait, that was porn he did… but that’s not the point. The point is that it pissed me off that these celebrities thought that they could just announce that they were comedians and just do the thing that I had spent ten years going from crappy club to crappy club, eating shitty food and going without sleep while driving through the night, learning how to do well enough to reach the bottom rungs of the ladder of success! With my only consolation being that after those initial big announcements of their new careers in comedy… you never fucking heard of any of them again.

All of which is a long way to go to say that celebrity chef and Food Network personality Chris Cosentino has written a Wolverine comic book for Marvel, and this is my review of it.

Whacko Storage Facility: Batman Annual #2 Review

I have been reading Batman comics since I was five years old, and therefore, I know what the purpose of Arkham Asylum is: it’s to give supervillains a place to take a nice rest after the end of a starring turn, and a place to break out of at the start of the next starring turn. And that’s pretty much it.

Seriously: can you think of anyone who has ever been cured at Arkham Asylum? I mean, in theory, any insane asylum is actually a psychiatric hospital; here in Massachusetts, the local nuthatch is known as Bridgewater State Hospital, not the Southeastern Mass Whacko Storage Facility (however, that will be the name of my next punk band). And when a facility is a hospital, one would assume the application of some form of medical treatment… and yet at Arkham, no one ever gets better. Hell, no one ever tries; the only people I can think of who were released from Arkham are Harvey Dent and The Joker, and that was in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, and it only happened as a way for Miller to mock liberals, and ended in the deaths of hundreds. If you believe the portrayal of psychiatry in Batman, the field only exists to clap you in a straitjacket and pump your full of antipsychotic drugs. Which is why I self-medicate with 30-packs of the Poor Man’s Valium. But I digress.

But if one stops to think about it, if there is a psychiatric hospital, there must be someone who went there under their own power looking for a little medical help, right? And what would happen if the place that that person went for healing became, over the course of years, the location where a city locked up its most dangerous and escape-prone homicidal maniacs?

It’s an interesting idea, and its the focus of Batman Annual #2, with a story by regular Batman writer Scott Snyder and new comics writer Marguerite Bennett, with the script by Bennett herself. And it is successful in giving readers a new point of view on comics’ favorite spastic hatch… even though it isn’t completely successful as a completely immersive and believable Batman story.

Live Forever: Batman Incorporated #13 Review

Editor’s Note: I don’t know if Batman’s dead or not. All I know is this. Parts of the city out there, it’s like Spoiler Year all over again.

Grant Morrison has been working on his Batman story since 2006. During that time, DC has gone through a Final Crisis and a full reboot, Batman has died and been reborn after traveling through history, had a son and lost him (despite a couple of stories predicting his future as Trenchcoat Gunslinger Batman), and I have been infuriated at least as often, if not more often, as I have been delighted by what Morrison has done with the character in the past seven years.

Seriously: for every awesome speculative story about a future Batman presiding over the end of Gotham City, there is Batman with a handgun shooting Darkseid. For each interesting revival of obscure Silver Age ephemera, there is a Joker story that is mostly text with the occasional odd computer-generated image (seriously, Grant: if I wanted to read a giant block of text, I’d read this Web site). And for every moment where Damian does something awesome, there are about 700 moments where Damian speaks, breathes and / or exists. I was not a fan of Damian, I guess is what I’m saying.

But Morrison’s Batman story is over now, completed in this week’s Batman Incorporated #13, where Batman finally has his last showdown with Talia al Ghul (who started this all by dumping that little rugrat Damian on Batman’s doorstep back in the first place), with the fate of Gotham and six other cities hanging in the balance. And in the issue, Morrison tries to have things a lot of ways, simultaneously tearing down and destroying Batman and Bruce Wayne while asserting that that could never happen, and pointing out the ridiculousness of the idea of Batman while also calling it timeless and classic.

All of which should be a filthy Goddamned mess, and in certain ways it is, as Morrison makes a couple of choices here that directly contradict other things that he did earlier in his run. However, there is no denying two things: while I don’t always enjoy or agree with his story choices, there is no question that Morrison is an excellent writer… and if you’ve been following his career since Animal Man, you know he can write one hell of a final issue when he wants to.

And while Batman Incorporated #13 might not be the best wrapup to an epic storyline I’ve ever read, it is, in fact, one hell of an interesting statement on Batman himself.

You’re Trapped In Here With Me: All-Star Western #22 Review

When I reviewed the first issue of All-Star Western almost two years ago now, I was semi-enthusiastic, but bemoaned the fact that the creative team of writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, and artist Moritat, had taken Jonah Hex off of the western frontier and dumped him into Gotham City. As I recall, I referred to the book as “Crocodile Dundee with dead hookers,” because dropping Hex into an urban setting, even in the late 1800s, felt like a well-trod fish-out-of-water story.

So you would think that All-Star Western #22, which features Hex being stuck in modern, 21st century Gotham City, would drive me absolutely fucking apeshit. Because on paper, if All-Star Western #1 was Crocodile Dundee, All-Star Western #22 should be Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles. Seriously, this book has all the elements that should drive me up the Goddamned wall: Hex baffled by a radio? Yup! Hex shocked and offended by the forward nature of modern conversation? Uh-huh! Hex amazed by an automobile? Hell, yes! If you go down the list of the classic fish-out-of-water stories, the only thing that’s missing is Hex trying to take a shit in a phone booth!

So case closed, right? I wasn’t thrilled with Hex in old Gotham, so I must hate Hex in modern Gotham, correct? Well, you’d think so… but it’s really the opposite. I enjoyed the hell out of this issue, not in spite of the fact that it was a fish-out-of-water story, but because of it. Because All-Star Western #22 isn’t a fish-out-of-water comedy; after all, Jonah Hex isn’t funny. He is a very dangerous man… and other than Batman and one or two other guys and girls, there are very few truly dangerous people in Gotham City.

You know… other than Jonah Hex.

Beautiful Disaster: Constantine #5 Review

Editor’s Note: With a magic word… SPOILERS!

Okay: can we all start out by admitting that, simply on paper, the idea of taking cynical con-man and master magician John Constantine – you know, the guy who once performed surgery on a succubus, who once was pregnant with the child of an angel, with a lit cigarette and the snarl, “this’ll hurt” – and turning him into Shazam is a stupid fucking idea?

Seriously, there are some characters that you just do not give powers to. If someone came up to you in a bar during San Diego Comic-Con and told you that The Comedian should get the powers of Doctor Manhattan, or that Deathstroke The Terminator should be given the abilities of Brainiac, you would either finish your beer and back away slowly, or ask him what the hell he was thinking when he characterized Starfire that way in Red Hood And The Outlaws #1.

Without any context, the idea of taking John Constantine and imbuing him with the powerset of a 12-year-old American child historically best known for having a talking tiger and responding to the worst of human tragedy with a heartily shouted “holy moley,” is ridiculous. Which is how I responded to the idea when it was dropped during DC’s Trinity War panel last week, and how I was prepared to view it when I opened Constantine #5 last night.

Well the bad news is that the idea of Captain Constantine is still kinda stupid. But the good news is that writer Ray Fawkes gives the move some reasonable context within the scope of the Trinity War crossover, adds consequences to the action that I wasn’t expecting, and most importantly: keeps the whole thing short.

Because no matter what, seeing John Constantine in a spandex suit shouting, “Shazam!” is still really kinda silly.

Sibling Rivalry: Hawkeye #12 Review

I normally try not to review the same title two months in a row unless it’s a big event comic – my reviews take a while to write thanks to my congenital case of diarrhea of the keyboard, and there are only so many hours in the day – but what the hell can I tell you? Hawkeye #12 is just that Goddamned good.

Seriously, I don’t know how Matt Fraction ever got this series greenlit without having photos of Axel Alonso in a compromising position with some form of beast of burden or something. Hawkeye barely appears in this book. There are exactly four panels of bow and arrow action. The closest thing to a supervillain is a Russian cocksucker in a tracksuit. The closest thing to a superhero battle and strategy is when a guy decides that he’s earned that money the Russians offered him in exchange for letting them kick the shit out of him. And this is in a Marvel superhero comic; for contrast, imagine a Superman comic that was about Jimmy Olsen getting ripped to the tits on laudanum while bemoaning his childhood by letting strange women pay him to take a dump on his chest.

This kind of superhero comic simply shouldn’t work; describing it on paper makes it sound like an inventory fill-in issue by a writer who was instructed to turn in something that doesn’t directly fuck around with the main character’s status quo. But it’s not like that at all; instead, we get a solid show-don’t-tell character study of Clint’s brother Barney, a snapshot of Clint and Barney’s childhood that uses artist Francesco Francavilla’s skills to show us a lot of information without having to waste a lot of time with unnecessary exposition, and for me, the first time I’ve ever seen a reason I can believe why Clint wouldn’t just write his brother – a Dark Avenger who stole Clint’s Hawkeye identity only weeks ago – completely off. All without seeing Hawkeye for more than a single page.

It shouldn’t work. But it does. Because it’s a superhero story about people, with some of the best pulpy art you can find anywhere.

Trinity Civil War: Justice League #22 Review

Look: I am never gonna hate too much on a comic book that gives me Superman fighting with Captain Marvel. And yes, I know that DC wants me to call him Shazam now. But I am old and crochety, and frankly? I am proud of the self-education I gave myself, back in the days of the 1970s Shazam! Saturday morning TV show, to call the character “Captain Marvel” rather than “Shazam.” Because I didn’t want to look stupid to the older comic book fans who lived on my block. And they did call me stupid when I called that guy “Shazam.” You hearing me, DC Comics? You listening me to digress like a sonofabitch?

Anyway. Justice League #22, the opening of the long-teased The Trinity War crossover event, gives me a good couple of pages of Superman and Captain Marvel tuning each other up. And as someone who remembers, as a young kid, waiting feverishly for Justice League of America #137 to show up in the spinner rack of my local corner grocery store (where they knew me by name and asked me to stop pretending the lime Ring Pops were Green Lantern power rings if I wasn’t gonna pay for one), seeing that makes me remember my youth and makes me predisposed to like a comic book.

And I did like Justice League #22… up to a point. As a kickoff point for a big crossover, it gives us a few examples of solid and believable characterization (and a few that aren’t – would someone at DC decide what kind of person Superman really is in the New 52?), it drops enough groundwork to let us believe that we’ll finally get the full story on Pandora – the mystery woman from all the initial first issues of the New 52, remember? – and if gives some good, solid, hot, sweet, superhero-on-superhero action.

If it has an Achilles’ Heel, it is that it is currently 2013. Which means that any continuity-wide story that features half of its superheros kicking the crap out of the other half is doomed to feel kinda like a lift from Marvel’s Civil War, or last year’s Avengers Vs. X-Men.

Solitary Gratification: Deadpool Kills Deadpool #1 Review

I just realized that Deadpool is the Ambush Bug of the Marvel Universe. This is a good thing, and not just a minor call to DC Comics to bring Ambush Bug the hell back in something a little meatier than their Channel 52 thing at the back of every issue.

Here’s what I mean: Deadpool knows he is a comic book character, and what’s more, because of that, he knows that a lot of the time he is there to be comic relief. And in a comic universe – or better yet, a multiverse, and if you show me a comic publisher that isn’t servicing a multiverse, I’ll show you a comic publisher who will be servicing one once a high-powered writer wants to do a crossover with one of their characters – a character who knows the score can be used to throw together any number of weird, goofy scenarios that no self-respecting reader would believe in a million years without the liberal application of mescaline… and we can still play along with it.

And Marvel has known this for quite a while. And as such, we have gotten cool little miniseries like Deadpool Killustrated and Deadpool Kills The Marvel Universe, which make no sense at all but were fun as hell to read. And now we have Deadpool Kills Deadpool, probably either because it gives writer Cullen Bunn a chance to dig out every variation on Deadpool that has ever bee created in the Marvel Universe, or perhaps because there is no one else left in the Marvel Universe for Deadpool to kill.

And, as with those other miniseries, this one is also shaping up to be as fun as hell.

Mad In Gotham – Review Of All-Star Western #21

Writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti have put Jonah Hex through a lot in All-Star Western in the last 20 issues. He’s dealt with everything from early Crime Bible disciples to Vandal Savage to Mr. Hyde (yes, as in “Dr. Jekyll and…”. Really.). At the same time, Gray and Palmiotti have created an intricate backdrop that has unfolded from an early Gotham City and spiraled out across post-Civil War America. They’ve populated it with a menagerie of colorful characters, ranging from the familiar, like Amadeus Arkham, to new ones, like The Barbary Ghost. However, starting with issue #19, the writing team has begun to focus on a character with definite ties to the DCnU present, if not the future, time traveling hero: Booster Gold. Does this signal an end to Gray and Palmiotti’s exploration of historical Gotham and its characters?

A closer look at the events of All-Star Western #21, rife with spoilers, after the jump.