FUCK TREES I CLIMB BUOYS MOTHERFUCKER

So I bought a bunch of non-Marvel, non-DC comics last month and I've been itching to get blitzed and give a report on them. So here goes nothing. Nothin' but a thang.

Madman: Atomic Comics! #’s 10 & 13

I don’t know what the hell’s going on here. I guess I should have tried harder to find issue 1 like I did with most of these other books, but I just went for the lowest numbers on the shelf. I remember reading the original Madman miniseries in high school, but when the character who’s just a head in a jar has a body, you know you’ve missed some shit.

C'mon Mike, I miss the '90s too, but be reasonable.

The upside? Mike Allred’s art is mind-blowing, surreal and (thanks to his wife) colorful; his characters are beautiful, simple yet iconic, better than Bruce Timm and maybe even Darwyn Cooke. Besides Frank (Madman), Joe (his girlfriend), and the Doc (the head-no-longer-in-a-jar guy), I don’t recognize any of the characters, at least two of which look like the bastard offspring of The Grimace. There are some interesting plot twists about Frank’s former life (he’s kind of a sentient zombie), and a member of the Atomics having his brain replaced, and it’s cool but nothing’s grabbing me except the art. If the price hadn’t suddenly gotten jacked up to $3.50 on issue 13 I might have gotten 14. As it is, I gotta drop it. Sorry Mike.

Mister X: Condemned # 1 of 4

Okay, opposite problem here. The concept and plot (what there is of it in 20 pages of a first issue) are interesting enough to hook me, even if I don’t really know which characters to root for, if any, seeing as how the title character is only in one panel… But the art. Damn. Apparently the first two volumes of Mister X featured art by Los Bros. Hernandez and Dave McKean, so, holy shit, but… apparently the creator, Dean Motter, has taken it upon himself to pencil this miniseries."Lang? Never heard of him."

So let’s call that Mistake #1. Possibly it takes up Mistakes 2-10, too. I really can’t stand to look at such amateur characters and pacing. The architecture looks cool, sure—it was inspired by Metropolis (Fritz Lang’s, not Superman’s) and it’s kind of the bedrock of the story—but the people and the way they move both look like shit. A guy with a really steady hand and MS Paint could do most of this stuff. Maybe he did. Dropped. Although I may look up the Archives that have the Hernandez/McKean art.


Mouse Guard: Winter: 1152 # 4-5

Neither art nor story really disappoints here. I got a smaller case of WTFitis than with Madman, in part because I was able to pick up on a few familiar medieval-epic tropes in the story, and in part because there’s little enough dialogue that I was mostly just following the action (which was about 500% better in its pacing and panel-to-panel storytelling than Mister X). So there are five or six main Mouse Guards we’re following in the course of two issues, as they fight owls and bats on their journey home from the weasel kingdom. I guess I only have one real complaint here, and that’s that it’s over too quickly. I’d like to pick this up in a collection; the single issues feel like too little at a time. I can only imagine what it’s like to actually collect this. I might pick up the next issue of this if it comes out in the foreseeable future (I’m told that that’s a problem).

"Mossflower? No. Can't say I've heard of him."

"Sorry, pal. Nobody named Mossflower here. Hope you find him."

The Mice Templar #6

Why the sudden proliferation of cute(ish) animals in desperate, pathetic, depressing and messed-up situations? It makes for cool comics, but it kind of gets to you watching mice suffer while wearing clothes and wielding weapons. Mice Templar is a little more wordy and its plot is a great deal more intricate than Mouse Guard, so they’re different enough to appeal to different people. They’re by no means in cahoots to corner the cute-animal-comics market (which probably is not really that big of a market… er, yet). Oeming’s art is different here than in Powers, but in a good way that’s probably more just the effect of him doing a different genre. I can’t remember the names of the characters and I don’t know everything that’s going on, but there’s just enough crazy epic medieval stuff to hook me. Keeper.

Hellboy: The Wild Hunt

Hrm. Seeing as how I’ve bought half of the eight-issue run already, I may well go ahead and finish it up. But if I’d only bought the first two? I’d have been out in a heartbeat. This is just my personal tastes, mind you. In general, I like Mike Mignola & Co.’s stuff. But, with X-Men as my first love, I can’t help but have a preoccupation with ensemble casts as opposed to extended stories with only one (already well-established) character. So watching Hellboy have yet another craaaazy situation foisted upon him after he’s left the BPRD because he’s tired of dealing with craaaazy situations is kind of lame. It’s like an action movie with just the tired old cop who’s a month away from retiring, with no rookie with something to prove all going in without backup. See what I mean? Premise: Evil spirits have awakened some hot naked magic chick in a red cloak. Solution: Hellboy punches giants to death. Side plot: Hellboy punches pixies and leprechauns to death. I can appreciate the Celtic flavor to it, but it feels very similar to other Hellboy stuff. I mean, don’t get me wrong, at the ripe old age of 24 I’m sick of pretty much everything—so Magneto’s gotten his powers back in the new issue of Uncanny. Jesus Christ, that’s only the fourth time since 1993 that he’s “come back”! Woooo, I’m so excited! Well, I am, but more about Terry Moore’s renditions of Emma Frost (p.s., seriously, no one else should ever be allowed to draw Emma Frost ever again, ever.) Matt Fraction, you could be doing better, and you should be. Colossus is sad? Big whoop. His Joss Whedon girlfriend died. I’d be sad if I were dating Jewel Staite or Morena Baccarin and she died to save the planet, too.
Er… anyway. I’m willing to see where “The Wild Hunt” goes, but I think they missed a big opportunity in issue one, when the leader of the wild hunt, whose duty it is to represent Herne, the Horned God (pagan big ups there), was just a guy wearing a big hollowed-out taxidermified stag’s head, instead of being some creepy mystical immortal dude with a giant stag’s head. Er, for a head. My interest in the story kind of crested and then fell right there.
But, his new goal of saving the life of his obligatory hot magic Irish girlfriend and the obligatory big reveal of the forces of good that are helping him this time is enough to keep me interested. Did I say already that Duncan Fegredo’s art is great enough that I thought it was Mike Mignola? Because it is. My only quarrels are with the story, if that says anything. Mister X is clearly a bit of a fluke. Shit, even The End League had decent art. I think. I don’t think I still have that one issue. I think I gave it back. I didn’t even want my money back. I just put it back on the shelf.

This is already a better story than the one I paid for.

BPRD: The Black Goddess # 1-3

This is a bit more like it. The cast of BPRD is a little more interesting than Hellboy, foil, antagonist. And what’s more, they introduce the characters in the first issue and then leave it to you to figure out the plot in issue #1. As a writer friend of mine, Matt Ross, and many others before him have said, if people like/care about the characters, the plot is secondary. And that’s exactly the problem with some of those “update pages” where before they start the issue they catch you up with what’s going on. Turn me onto the characters first and you’ve already won more than half the battle. Am I alone in this? Anyway. There’s some immortal reincarnated guy who’s guarded by a city full of what may be Buddhist monks who are also were-Yetis—so far, so awesome—and he’s (maybe?) holding Liz the Pyrokinetic hostage, or else she came there of her own free will. I can’t really tell from the story so far, but she’s levitating in the inner sanctum of Immortal Guy’s temple and she’s not opening her eyes or talking. And apparently she and Memnan Saa (immortal guy) are the only hope for the Earth not being overrun by frog-people. Apparently this is the second or third part in a trilogy of stories, which makes me wish that Mignola and Davis and their people would number their goddamn comics in a more comprehensible fashion. I know that limited series have their place, and every story deserves its own title, but can we have some sort of order that’s evident on the single issues, not just sequential numbers on the trade paperbacks? I’d be confused if I actually gave a shit. As it stands, the stakes seem to be rather higher in this series than in Hellboy’s current miniseries, so I feel a little more invested in it though I’m reasonably satisfied that there will be no frog-related incursions into our world anytime soon. Cue banking crisis-related joke that I’m not smart or sober enough to make here. Done.

The Umbrella Academy: Dallas # 1 & 2

Is this supposed to be funny?
I realize that’s usually a high school principal’s line, but I’m honestly uncertain after a quarter of an average human lifetime spent reading DC and Marvel comics—are these talking, dancing chimps juxtaposed with ruthless hitmen in cartoon-character masks, hardboiled vigilantes and esoterically-powered heroes supposed to be funny, or not? That makes all the difference for us critics of literature between Larry Hama and Larry the Cable Guy, between Frank Miller and Frank Capra, between R. Kelly and Tim & Eric. Without that simple declaration of intent, for every ten of us that declare it a work of absurdist genius, another ten will decry it as absolute junk.
As of right now, I’m a little lost. The idea is that a rich old s.o.b. named Hargreeves adopted seven superpowered children in the ‘60s, and today they’re barely-functioning psychos who can manage to keep it together long enough to save the planet but can’t get along with each other to save their lives. I’d love to give the creators behind Frisky Dingo a crack at this premise. Maybe they’d make it workable, but even then that’s a lot of pressure to put on them. It’s just that I can’t think of any other work of fiction with such a retarded premise that managed to make the plot work for the characters. And Frisky Dingo was hilarious. This is… well… crap. I hate to dump on a critically-acclaimed musician, but I bet if Elvis Costello tried his hand at Green Lantern Corps, he’d suck, too. I think Umbrella Academy was better off in Gerard Way’s head where it made some kind of goddamn sense to anyone who didn’t get to read the first five issues! See, this is what I was talking about with BPRD—describe the characters and let us pick up on the story as it goes! Not the other way around! So Number Five has been missing for years and Spaceboy is stuck in a giant monkey’s body! So what? If you can’t make me care about those characters, and make me care really damn fast, I’m going to go waste my money on yet another book full of Dawn pin-ups instead! At least then I can jerk off and have something to show for the money I spent! And P.S., what is your preoccupation with apes? What are you, eight years old? I thought The Black Parade was all about accepting death or some grand, noble theme like that; where does a chimp in a tuxedo fit into that equation? I haven’t found monkeys in human clothes to be so damn endearing since I started understanding all the dick jokes in Mallrats.
Okay, I’m rambling, but seriously, if this is supposed to be funny then this is some Andy Kaufman shit, as opposed to say, Andy Samberg. I was happy to find that the second issue made a bit more sense than the first, but I still found myself liking the ruthless killers in cartoon-character masks more than the supposed heroes. If this was an issue of Uncanny X-Men I’d have issued a jihad on Matt Fraction by now. Unless your name is Alan Moore or Warren Ellis, either write superheroes, or don’t. Stop fucking around. Mark Millar, I’m talking to you, too.

Dropped.
NOW do you see why story has to come before art? NOW will you listen?!

Haunted Tank! # 1 & 2

Speaking of absurdism, the fact that this isn’t a retcon, that this was actually a comic book in the fifties, is in itself a triumph for human art. Some guy in the ‘50s wrote WWII stories about a tank commander whose tank is possessed by the spirit of JEB Stuart the CSA cavalry general. No lie. And now some dudes at Vertigo are retooling the story with a black tank commander named Jamal Stuart dealing with a 150-year-old ghost while trying to make it through the deserts of Iraq. The surreality of a man speaking in a no-nonsense tone to a ghost, about why saying “darky” is inappropriate, all while laying waste to a battalion of Iraqi freedom fighters and calling them towelheads, is (contrary to the Umbrella Academy school of humor) obviously hilarious on multiple levels. This is not winning any Hugo Awards or anything like The Sandman, but I’m enjoying myself. Keeper.

Our boys at Normandy did not die in vain.

Really, Dark Horse? Seriously?

I know there's nothing new under the Sun and all that, but come on! You could have tried harder. Don't make the real Thor angry.

from issue 2, volume 2

The End League #1

Written by Rick Remender
Drawn by Mat Broome

Didn’t Dark Horse put out, I don’t know, Concrete? The Mask? Usagi Yojimbo? Sin goddamn City? Yes, Wikipedia tells me, they did, not to mention 300, not to mention they hold the licensing rights for all Star Wars comic books and the new "8th season" of Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics.

So how did this slip through the cracks?

Let’s start with the premise. Everyone’s desperate to cash in on the post-apocalypse/zombie craze of the past few years (don’t get me started on how the Bush administration’s gross negligence of, uh, everything has affected popular culture so much that some people are anxiously awaiting some kind of horrific apocalypse as if it were a second Christmas), with Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead likely being the best of the lot. These Dark Horse fellows decide to take a slightly different tack, saying that a global ecological catastrophe caused the deaths of two-thirds of the Earth’s population and mutated a significant portion of the survivors into superhumans. Fine. Good. Turns out, the catastrophe in question was caused, somehow, by the planet’s superpowered protector, Astonishman. Yes, Astonishman. Jesus, he’s such a lame ripoff of a ripoff of a ripoff that I can’t even get past the name. Yet I press on. For science.

What do they call the apocalypse brought on by Not-Superman? The Green Event.

Rick Remender, you douchebag! Even if that didn’t sound like a Spring closeout sale at Bed, Bath & Beyond—which it does—Warren Ellis’s Marvel series Newuniversal, a reinvention of the 1980s Marvel gimmick the “New Universe,” just came out last year, and what was the catalyst in that series for hundreds of people gaining unexplained superpowers? It was called the White Event. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but you know what? Warren Ellis does not need your flattery. He drinks whiskey and pisses beer. Sometimes the other way around. If he could bleed, he would bleed caffeine. He does not bleed. Other people bleed for him. If the Devil existed he would sell his soul to Warren Ellis. Rick Remender, you have the name of a classic rock DJ. There is such a thing as reusing an old idea; there is such a thing as breathing new life into old archetypes. Warren Ellis is but one example of the brave writers out there who wrestle every month with the writhing, giant anaconda of continuity in today’s modern superhero books, and most of them come out somewhat on top of the mythic beast, having secured another victory for original storytelling.

Rick Remender, you are not one of those lucky winners. If justice was a force as binding as magnetism or gravity, you’d have collapsed under the weight of all the clichés you carry around in your head, crippled and comatose forever for populating a comic book with such characters as Arachnakid, Goddess, Johnny Tomorrow and the Prairie Ghost. That’s to say nothing of the token lesbian couple that you obviously shoehorned in just to appear more progressive. Thanks to Wikipedia, I see now that Remender is first and foremost an illustrator, having drawn the comic book version of Bruce Jesus Christ Campbell’s The Man With the Screaming Brain, as well as several album covers and a handful of other Dark Horse productions. This lends further credence to my theory: most professional artists should not be allowed to write unsupervised.

Even all of this doesn’t compare to the last page. I think I blocked out earlier mentions of the name from Astonishman’s trite opening monologue because I didn’t think it would figure in later. But no, they had to go and do it—they made Thor a character in this story’s continuity. Even this could ultimately be forgiven if the rest of the book had been better—after all, it’s still nominally a free country, and if any group of characters is public domain by now, it’s the ancient pagan gods of Europe—but Thor? Despite Wonder Woman’s near-70-year history, most of the Greek gods are still up for grabs as far as a definitive comics version—ditto for the Egyptians, and the Celts have barely been poked at. But Thor? Remender, you couldn’t have tried to be a little creative? You could have picked Zeus, (I nearly said Ares, but now he’s Marvel canon too) or Horus or goddamn motherfucking Cuchulainn, and your readers would’ve thought, “oh, he’s riffing on Thor, I get it.” But no. You just went right up to Thor and slapped him with your dick. On the off-chance you don’t figure this out in the future, that’s a bad idea. “Thor kill puny humans”? Seriously? I’m not the kind of guy who thinks that America is all about how you have the right to sue anyone over anything, but I think if you don’t work for Marvel and you use the phrase “puny humans” in a comic book, Stan Lee should legally own your children.

I think if I try to explain the plot any further, my brain will start screaming. In the hands of someone capable, this story idea could have been reasonably okay. Unfortunately, Dark Horse was too busy managing its Buffy and Star Wars franchises to realize it had let The End League slip out the factory door unhindered, and thus I am confronted with a hack story of nearly Claremontesque proportions.

Rating: Two White Russians (I’d rate it worse but Erin gave me the comic for free)