The Price Of Friendship – Hellblazer Annual #1 Review

Last night I got into an argument with a bottle of vodka and the vodka won. I woke up feeling pretty low, but you know who probably feels worse? Anybody who makes the mistake of palling around with John Constantine, that’s who. This is a fact that we are told goes back as far as Constantine’s childhood in John Constantine: Hellblazer Annual. “Suicide Bridge” takes Constantine back to his old stomping grounds in Liverpool. The mother of a long missing childhood friend is dying and his family would like him to work his mojo to determine what happened to her son, so she can die with some piece of mind. As is typical for Constantine, the search for answers never goes smoothly.

Spoilers after the jump!

Dark History: Justice League Dark #3 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: On initial publication of this review, I missed Ryan Sook’s cover credit and attributed the cover work to interior artist Mikel Janin. Mikel was good enough to check into the comments and point out my error. The review has been updated with more accurate credits.

I am probably not the best person to objectively review this book, for a few reasons, even though I studied journalism in college. But I figure once you’ve publshed a review that contains the sentence, “This ending is so Goddamned shameful I can barely even find the fucking words,” I can pretty much chuck any pretense of journalistic objectivity out the window, at least when it comes to the Comic Book Reviews category.

With that said, let’s talk about Justice League Dark #3: I liked this book… and I shouldn’t have, by every standard I’ve set for comics in every review I have written to date.

It’s decompressed. It contains almost no action. It barely explains what happened before, assumes the reader has knowledge of comics that were canceled fifteen years ago and were long out of print, and has a cover that writes checks the comic itself doesn’t cash. I mean, at no time in this book does Zatanna ride a Batcycle, and if you’re gonna bait and switch me like that, the least artist Mikel Janin Ryan Sook could have done was put her in her fishnets for a little free-of-charge fanboy boner (Fanboy-ner? Hey, no Google results! Fanboy-ner! Trademark /copyright 2011 Crisis On Infinite Midlives!). And John Constantine does not shoot fire from his hands, Mikel Ryan. The only way his hand should look like that would immediately after fingerblasting Veneria, the Harpy Queen of Tertiary Chlamydia.

So I shouldn’t like this book. But it has four things going for it: Shade, The, Changing and Man.

The Bird Is The Word

It is Wednesday evening, and as you regular readers of Crisis On Infinite Midlives know…

…New Comics Day means that this is the end of our broadcast day.

Still and all, that’s a damn good take for the Wednesday before a long American holiday weekend! There’s a new Kick-Ass by Mark Millar, a new Warren Ellis Secret Avengers, a book from Image’s Pilot Season, a new Justice League Dark (Which had better have some fucking Shade: The Changing Man in it! You hear me, Milligan!?), and a new Hawkman, which I only bought to support an American Thanksgiving “We have a bird” joke!

Speaking of Thanksgiving, due to the holiday weekend, posting for the next four days may be a bit more sporadic than usual. But please stick with us; we will do our best to post new news items and reviews… but to do that, we need tonight to start reading the new books.

See you somewhere during or after the tryptophan coma, suckers!

I Never Thought This Would Happen To Me: Red Lanterns #3 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers. It also contains at least three euphemisms for male ejaculation, several vulgar terms for female genitalia, and more than one filthy joke. With the entirety of Red Lanterns #3 being one of those filthy jokes. You have been warned.

I’ve read three issues of DC’s Red Lanterns now, and having done so, I have one obvious question: who hurt you, Peter Milligan?

What was her name? Sit on down, crack open a beer and tell Uncle Rob aaaaallll about that cooze. Get it out of your system. And then maybe you can get back to writing a superhero book that makes some fucking sense.

Red Lanterns #3 opens with a bat chick with big knockers (You remember Bleez, right?) inverted, look of terror on her face while she chokes on thick, viscous liquid, while Atrocitus narrates:

With luck, the pain will be intense.

That’ll mean it’s working. the gelatinous liquids of Ysmault entering her brain.

Sure, Atrocitus. I call mine “Old Sparky,” but “Ysmault” works too, I guess. Seriously, Peter: where’d you salvage that narration from? Your letter to fucking Penthouse?

Magic, Broken Human Beings And Sacrifices On The Altar Of Revenue – Review Of Justice League Dark #2

Something dark and malevolent is afoot in the DCU, and it’s not just the continued employment of Rob Liefield despite any evidence of an ability to utilize symmetry or feet in any of his attempts at artwork. No, I’m speaking of magical nasties that defy even the efforts of the heavy hitting Big Three to put down. In Justice League Dark, magically powered individuals have to join together to defeat an out of control, seemingly insane villain, the witch known as The Enchantress. But is she really the Big Bad that is causing reality to come undone or the victim of some other, similarly damaged, reality challenged, spelling slinging powerhouse?

Spoilery goodness after the jump!

Sometimes You Need Detergent And Elbow Grease; Sometimes You Need An Exorcism – Hellblazer #283

This isn’t a review. This is what happens when I’m left alone in a room with a packet of Sudafed, a bottle of Scotch, and a stack of comics and start to free associate. You’ve been warned.

Menthols? What alternate reality is this?

In addition to John Constantine’s sizable, nay, myriad tragic flaws as a human being, in John Constantine: Hellblazer #283 – “The Devil’s Trench Coat Part 1” we learn that he also doesn’t do laundry. John Constantine would have been that guy who lived on your floor in your college dorm who deposited all his athletic wear on the carpet of the hallway outside his doorway after sports practice and just left it there, stinking up the joint until a squadron of RAs was dispatched to enforce a cease and desist – that is, if Constantine actually went to college. Constantine’s aversion to even hitting his trench coat with the occasional blast of Febreeze is so bad that the coat has, apparently, gained sentience and gone on walk about. Then some hapless chump buys it on Ebay:

Ring Of Fire: Red Lanterns #1 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains immediate, thoughtless, prejudicial spoilers. It is even possible that the story has already been ruined for you. So you might as well keep reading.

If you’ve been a comic book fon for the past couple of years, particularly if you’ve been one who followed Geoff Johns’s Green Lantern saga from the Sinestro Corps War through the Blackest Night event of 2010, you are going to cream your pants over the first seven pages of Red Lanterns #1. Peter Milligan NAILS everything fun and cool about the Red Lantern Corps, so much so that at one point I stopped what I was doing and I told Amanda, “You know what? Red Lanterns has the opening I’ve liked best of any of DC’s New 52 so far.”

“That’s great, Rob,” she said, “But I’d appreciate it if you’d put the comic book away until after we’re done having sex.”

But I digress… actually, I don’t, because that seven page opener is as much a non-sequiter as the above joke was. It has next to nothing to do with the remainder of the story that follows, and frankly? If you’re one of those ephemeral “new readers” that the New 52 is supposed to be reaching, I’m guessing you’ll quit somewhere during those seven pages and never read the book again.

Because if you don’t already know the characters, their backgrounds and motivations, what you’re seeing as an introduction to the Red Lantern Corps is an angry kitty in a red jumpsuit who bites some space dicks (The aliens in question being dicks, not ACTUAL, dangling space wangs. And the aliens themselves aren’t actually penises, they’re DICKS. Oh, forget it.), and his owner, who appears to be Mike Tyson if he ate too many carrots and tore his own lips off to give his teeth room to reproduce in his own mouth. And you’ll close the book, say something like, “Huh. those comics people DO eat mushrooms,” and go back and read Harry Potter again.