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.

Animalistic Man: Deadpool Kills The Marvel Universe #2 Review

Editor’s Note: The house chimichanga contains carnitas, refried beans and tasty, tasty spoilers! 

This won’t be a long review, but it doesn’t have to be. Because Deadpool Kills The Marvel Universe #2 is just plain old big, stupid, violent fun. Sure, it’s fun with a conceit behind it that’s straight out of Grant Morrison’s classic Animal Man run from the 80s, but the straight lift doesn’t take away from what is a breezy, kill-em-all shoot-em-up.

This issue continues an Elseworlds-style story where experimentation on Deadpool has altered the nature of the voices in his head, changing them from a constant call for chimichangas and boobies to one to kill every pair of spandex pants in the Marvel Universe. On one hand, this actually leads to a less overtly humorous version of Deadpool – a lot of the fun in a normal Deadpool comic comes from his whacky and over-the-top internal dialogue, whereas here, the voices in his head say things like, “It doesn’t matter. They all have to die.” You know: boring, day-to-day repetitive shit like the voices in my head.

Choices Have Already Been Made – Review Of Ghost Rider #6

Hey! Guess what, everyone? I found a great comic book that I’d really like to recommend to you all but, what’s that Internet? Ghost Rider, written by Rob Williams, with art by Dalibor Talajić has been canceled?

Oh. Oh well.

So, does this cancellation have anything to do with the upcoming sequel to the 2007 Ghost Rider movie? You know, the one that was so bad it got a 4.3 out of 10 rating on Rotten Tomatoes…which begs the question as to why there’s even a sequel in the first place?

Launched during the “Fear Itself” event under the guiding hand of writer Rob Williams, “Ghost Rider” provided a new female version of the long-standing hero while keeping original rider Johnny Blaze on as co-star. The character has a new movie — “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance” from Columbia Pictures — set to hit theaters this February, though beyond an incoming special re-presenting classic tales of Blaze, the publisher appears to have no plans for a major media tie-in push.

So, that’s a no. Having a female Ghost Rider possibly running around when Nicholas Cage is poised to take yet another stab at comic book movie glory has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Sure.

Spoilers, snakes and swamp water ahead!