MARVELOUS COMA

JUSTICE LEAGUE 1

2011-09-18T00:01:00.000-07:00

First off I want to thank Grits Gries and his smaller but getting bigger sidekick Ursa Fanghorn for providing the above interpretation of the new Justice League cover.

DC KICKS IN "THE NEW 52"! 52 WEEKS IN A YEAR! 52 BOOKS IN A MONTH! 365 DAYS IN A YEAR! 206 BONES IN THE ADULT HUMAN BODY! WHATEVER!

Comics, like all art and music, is an ongoing discussion of the form. There are comics that move the conversation forward, comics that hold it in place, and comics that pull it backwards. I would put this, Justice League number 1, in the latter category. A comic that pushes you and the medium in reverse. The cover alone, too ugly to place at the top of this post, gives no message of a bright new era in the DC universe. This is the song of stagnation. Justice League, the flagship book for the revolution, got the most hype for it's costume redesigns which seem to center around higher collars. Yes, higher collars. Jim Lee, out on the golf course, saw a young man wearing a polo shirt with the collar up and thought to himself; "That. That right there. That's 2011. I can already taste the new readers."

The biggest reason I can think of for DC comics to reboot it's whole line is the need for stories that easily translate to movies. They want simple tales of heroes meeting heroes. Powerful beings, not yet friends, beating the shit out of each other, questioning one another's loyalty to the cause and eventually staring up at the moon from a romantic rooftop, shoulder to shoulder, united in the face of some great evil. Hollywood can't mine the ancient and wacky stock of DC's infancy for solid origin stories because they would unearth Batman meeting Krypto the Superdog and today's blood thirsty movie going audience just won't buy it. So instead of creating a separate Ultimate Universe like Marvel did to forward a think tank for big screen enterprises, DC threw everything back into the blender and we get,

Alzheimers. We get narrative Alzheimers. We get DC on track to retrofit every story they ever told. And here I thought computers were making us smarter. But there's no No-Prize in starting from scratch. It's about building bridges from unbelievable situation to unbelievable situation. That's the basis of universe building comics. Back to the comic let's see what happens next to Green Lantern and The Batman,

Ok, fake out, that's not what happens next. That second page is from 2005's All Star Batman. The Frank Miller/Jim Lee atrocity that was so wrong it couldn't even curse-word it's way past the finish line and drowned itself in masochistic bile by issue 10. But it is also an example of another recent Batman meets Green Lantern issue drawn by Jim Lee. The man must wake up thinking he's living in Groundhog day. But I'm psyched that Jim Lee put Jim Lee (as he now runs the DC show) on the new centerpiece title even when the last two projects he has been involved with, All Star Batman and Wildcats, just quit mid or not even mid story. And it's unfair to compare All Star Batman to this new Justice League. Geoff Johns is a finely tuned writing machine with a deep understanding of his characters and he's a world away from the twisted propaganda of Frank Miller. But what both stories have is a new beginning for major characters and a celebrated macho flare. But maybe macho flare is just Batman where ever you find him. And Justice League, instead of having All Star Batman's cast of half naked battered woman, just chose to have no woman at all. Playing it safe. Bringing in new readers?

I was introduced to Geoff John through his writing on Justice Society. It had a cast of characters I didn't really care or know all that much about but Johns made them interesting. Here in Justice League between Batman and Green Lantern are two characters I do care about, and Johns makes them, well, uninteresting. Sure, it is only one issue deep into his run but I can almost see the stick'em note above his desk that says, "dumb it down", next to one that says "Teenagers". When you are dealing with super heroes, dumbing it down brings you(and them) very close to catatonic. Now every comics reader wants the level of storytelling in their favorite books to age with him/her. When I was 16 I wanted to read what I thought was cool, and now 22 years later I still want to read what I think is cool. How can an industry indulge in the needs of one aging customer? What about today's new 16 year old? What I didn't know 22 years ago but I pretend to know now is that good superhero comics have always been written for adults, but with a simplicity of delivery. You don't and you can't write comics for teenagers.

Jim Lee still turns out a solid easy to read product. A little craggier around the edges than he used to be, slightly rushed perhaps to get this book out monthly, but he still draws male buttocks like a true champ. Him and Marc Silvestri, "The Buttock Kings". I was looking forward to Grant Morrison and Lee's run on Wildcats. If it hadn't been abandoned it could have had the push and pull of two different minds creating a mainstream yet stirring series. JL feels like there might be too much agreement between creators. No tension. Nothing new to learn from each other. It's just, "hey man, let's bring in new readers. Yeah dude, let's play it safe."

Oh yeah, one other thing on the costume redesigns, the case of Young Superman's mysterious new armor?

Now DC's mammoth reboot isn't all mediocrity, in fact I would call it a conceptual success as I have bought way more DC titles this September already in 2 weeks than I normally would all month(Though I also bought way less since they announced the reboot than I normally would in the last couple months). But so far, Batgirl, OMAC, Action Comics, to name a few. And there are some titles, specifically the B-E list characters that could be or could become great. Like Swamp Thing, Frankenstein, and specifically Animal Man.

Written by Jeff Lemire with art by Travel Foreman(inks by Travel and Dan Green, and I think inks are a big thing here) Animal Man is off to a great start. And it is pushing the conversation of comics forward. Jeff Lemire wears Buddy Baker aka Animal Man's skin as if it were his own, with delightful details like Buddy taking on the weight of a bumblebee so he won't wake the kids while walking on the squeaky floorboards he has yet to fix, or after stopping an armed depressed man who is holed up in the children's ward of the hospital Buddy just yearns to get home to his family. The reliable internet tells me that when Jeff Lemire talked to Grant Morrison(the mastermind behind most of the Animal Man mythos) about writing Buddy, Morrison replied "Don't fuck with his family". But fucking with Buddy's family seems to be the name of the game. I picked up the first few issues of Lemire's Vertigo book "Sweet Tooth" and though I liked it it did not win me over. It read really really fast, so smooth it slipped right off me, but I think now i'll give Sweet Tooth another chance. Now Lemire is Canadian. I don't in any way want him to leave these new DC titles, but Alpha Flight. Someday, please. Do an Alpha Flight run.

Travel, a strange artist(with a cool name) turns out a striking issue 1 cover, (his Loki mini series covers were also well designed)

but certain interior pages look bare to the point of having to mutter, "oh this is one of those artists who can't draw backgrounds".

It's a weird thing, the figure and the background and whether they intersect or not, but I think it is a thing that artists struggle with. Schooled artists take "figure drawing class" but I don't recall an emphasis on "figure in relation to setting" drawing classes. It makes one wonder if as an artist the relationship between your figure and your background, integration versus separation, mimics your relationship with the world in general. But just when you start thinking Travel wants people to live in a white bubble he hits you with this...

...and you just don't care whether he walks in the yard with bare feet or shoes on. You just dig into it. (And you wonder if Travel is looking at Kentaro Miura's insane endlessly creative Berserk manga from Dark Horse)

God I hope he is. I hope everyone is. All in all, Travel Foreman's layouts are surprising, daring, at times nonsensical, sometimes a failure but most times interesting. His line, or possibly Dan Green's inks, has variety and vitality. I'm excited to see Travel with an ongoing series, evolving, getting stronger and more daring as he goes. For the Animal Man infomaniacs, the character was first seen in 1965 as simply Buddy Baker in issue 180 of Strange Adventures.

Buddy moved into a higher profile position in the 1988 Vertigo Animal Man series by Grant Morrison. I personally came too late for Morrison's run but just on time for some horrifyingly beautiful work by writer Jamie Delano and Artist Steve Pugh. Brian Bolland does this astounding cover. This. Cover. Rules!

If memory serves me this 1993 storyline has Buddy Baker dead and attempting to travel back through an assortment of animal forms and mutations to his original human shape. Meanwhile a crazed Uncle Dudley is assaulting his son, Cliff. Buddy's daughter Maxine is the voice of trust on this next juicy Steve Pugh page, where she tries to set up a rendezvous with Buddy's wife, Ellen.

Animal Man has always had a wealth of creative talents behind it, and has always been a playground for experimentation. Shamefully I haven't read the Morrison run that began the Vertigo title, but I plan too. Oh I plan too. Here's hoping the new title keeps up the enlightened weirdness. We need it.

Now before we move on to more reviews we have a final word on Animal Man and Justice League in this special feature, a visit with guest professional comic book reviewer Anu King! (with bonus appearances by Rahul(spiderman), Lucia, Yesah and Hunter)

Thanks Anu! We'll keep on the lookout for "Amulet". And now, on with the reviews!

THE NEW AVENGERS ANNUAL 1 2011

And now to the Marvel Universe! In this "annual", Simon Williams, a.k.a. Wonder Man, continues his Brian Bendis scripted spiral downward into hate and revenge, a subplot that wanders into the Avengers titles on occasion. The idea that Wonder Man has turned on the Avengers could be a good one, and about 5 pages into this I thought we had a "The Boys" rip off on our hands set in the Marvel U. And I wish that's what this was. I wish there was one teaspoon of intelligence behind Wonder Man's plot a.k.a. this comic's plot. But no. The Avengers cause violence and therefore Wonder Man will bring violence upon them to teach them a lesson because he is going crazy or something, possibly due to his Ionic energies. By the close of the book the mansion is destroyed yet again and the New Avengers lie unconscious, defeated. Tomorrow they will wake up with a fist induced hang over and nothing consequential will have happened. Wonder Man and his gang of second rate dudes have defeated Wolverine, Luke Cage, Spiderman, The Thing, Ms. Marvel, Doctor Strange, Jessica Jones and Mockingbird and now gaze upwards at Avengers tower where the more powerful Avengers live. The book's a dud. A dull fight scene between dullards, a joke really. Line up for it folks. Gabriele Dell'otto paints a great cover though, but turns in his most lackluster work to date for the interior.

It's some of that "pencil only/digital inks" stuff superhero books have been delivering like the work of artist Ron Garney over in Wolverine and Ultimate Captain America. It all just ends up looking soft, blurry and rushed. Reads kind of like "Sorry, couldn't afford an inker". I know I know, "raw, untamed pencil". Yeah well, you wish. There's enough background on this raw untamed Garney Ultimate Captain America page to at least let you know where they might be.... the muddy jungle. It looks kind of cool small, not so cool bigger if you click on it.

If they really want to do some "pencil only" work these guys should check out CF's Powr Mastrs.

These notes scrawled on the back of a Powr Mastrs page might give some insight into what CF is looking at.

Hey he's looking at Berserk! So should we! again!

and now, on with the reviews!

THE WHALE 2010

Let's break from all the manliness for a quick moment and look at Aidan Koch while we are in pencil mode. Having read a few reviews of last year's The Whale I came away with two thoughts. People seem to like her other books better, and people seem convinced she is taking a walk near the beach with her dog. Well, it's not her dog. It's a dog that is visiting her much like the seal is visiting her much like the ghost of the lost loved one "S" is visiting her. It is such a overt and fleeting visitation that the dog is even named "Casper" which translates to "friendly ghost". I thought this small story was wonderful. A floating moment of sadness, unable to drift out to sea.

And now onto the final barely a review!

GANTZ 18

Gantz is on a bi-monthly schedule now from Dark Horse publishers and I think it, above all others, is the book I look forward to the most. Artist/writer Hiroya Oku provides us with a thrilling sci-fi action drama set in modern day Japan. Ultraviolent, disturbing, grotesque, surprising and genuinely weird this tale is of a group of reincarnated citizens involved in some sort of hunting and fighting game that takes place in public in Tokyo yet is invisible to people uninvolved(though it can still be lethal to them). Chasing aliens, fighting monsters, staying alive, and in many cases getting dismembered or killed permanently is the basic story, all set against the mystery of "who knows about and is controlling this game?". It's an impeccable book. And issue 18 is specifically action packed. No room for the protagonists to ponder their situation or fantasize about magazine models in this one. Some people may be turned off by Gantz's computer generated art or its blood spattered shock or it's gratuitous nudity or it's sometimes jumpy narrative structure or the fact that certain characters basically look like others except their hair is an inch longer but I say it rules and as for the over the topness if it's gonna rain I would rather it pour. This book will have you on the edge of your seat one minute and in tears the next. Gantz!

And just when you think you are starting to sort out what is going on, forget it.....Gantz!

Here's the Tanaka Alien they fight in issue 4. Pretty vicious huh? Gantz!

Alright. That's plenty. Oh yeah so what's the connection between all these books. I mean, Gantz and The Whale and Jim Lee? Well. They're all comics! hahahahahaa!! Hey Animal Man, what do you think of the new Justice League?

UNCANNY X-MEN 538

2011-06-20T11:11:00.000-07:00

IN WHICH DEATH IS EXPLAINED AND THEN EXPERIENCED AND THEN REVERSED, A FEW TIMES, I THINK.

PART 1. S(P)ELLING IS MY BUSINESS AND BUSINESS IS BAD.

It's been a year since I posted. So why now, on the anniversary of my own demise, have I been moved to file a new report? Stirred from infinity, returned from beyond, not unlike so many X-Men we know? Well what brings me crawling back from my critical grave is this most pressing issue to all career comic book readers; why, after 48 years of unbroken numbering, is Uncanny X-Men restarting with a new number one? It's been two weeks of making jokes about DC's hysterical move of renumbering every single title in their line in a desperate attempt to be relevant and new, and suddenly the most classy of all ongoing mainstream titles jumps the fountain of youth bandwagon. There goes it's ability to even stand in the Shadow of 2000AD. Uncanny X-men, surviver of all other renumberings over the years has always been rewardingly consistent(for example Avengers ran 402 issues, then 13 issues, then 84 issues to suddenly be ridiculously reverted back to original numbering for issues #500-503 to then jump to New Avengers 1 and on and on). But with a quick handjob to the masses, a thin ploy to get the numbers back up for a pathetic issue or two before slipping to prior sales, Uncanny pulls a Phoenix. This series was a direct path to the beginning, a bridge to Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, a mangled, tangled, twisted, sometimes pathetic but never ever broken bridge. Is there really any artist or writer in the world who would prefer working on an Uncanny X-Men #1 over a X-Men 94 or even the upcoming now lost Uncanny 550 or 555! Marvel claims that this upcoming "Schism" storyline is so jarring that the title could just not go on as it was, but really, is anything more jarring than what has come before? They insult their own comic. So here is my advice. Publish a nice 4-6 issue Kierron Gillen scripted mini-series and then return to the original number with no gap. That's the key right? Think of it as a Giant Sized X-Men #1 spread over a half a dozen books. No missing 94. No missing 545-549 prior to it's return with 550. We all know the original count is coming back for #600. Marvel could not pass up such a fiscal opportunity. Just remember we fans with our longboxes and clip-on Nightcrawler tails have to file this shit in an orderly fashion. So it brings me no joy to do what must be done and call for an astonishingly uncanny boycott. Friends, enemies, nerds from around the globe. I say this. Boycott the new Uncanny X-Men number one. Read a copy in the store. Buy two copies of 544! Then walk right out that comic book door! Teach these scheming money juggling comicrats who's in charge of their plummeting paper publishing program. Boycott Uncanny X-Men #1!

Sadly, I won't be able to. Because I am a collector. And because I want these comics as frustrating as they are to continue.

After the "X-Men Schism" in the regenerative period to be dubbed "X-Men Regenesis" there will be two titles launching to fill Uncanny X-Men's void. A New Uncanny X-Men scripted by current Uncanny writer Kieron Gillen with art by Carlos Pacheco and internet fan-forum favorite "tracing paper" Greg Land, and Wolverine and the X-Men by Scalped writer Jason Aaron with art by "cartoony" Chris Bachelo. Here's the cover to the "Wolverine and the X-Men" first issue,

I put the question recently to Jason Aaron via my pal AW Dude's twitter , read from the bottom...

He really put me in my place. These guys responded too...

Mahatmazombie is trying to get all Infinite Crisis with Mr. Aaron by crossovering universes. PS. Scalped is getting rebooted starting with a new issue -4, counting backwards for 2 and a half men issues, then returning with a number 11, skipping even numbers from there culminating in a guest appearance by Obama and Charlie Sheen. And you know what, I will continue to buy it cause Scalped is one of the best books out there. Here's the cover of issue 46 by series cover artist Jock.

Scalped is grim, gritty, a modern Native American crime drama with myth at it's edges. It's full of complex characters who make decisions that in general tend toward the worst all in the brutal resource-deprived landscape of the modern day Indian reservation. Somehow, despite the darkness and the odds, the characters have enough life to keep you charmed. To continue with more psuedo-Scalpish dramatic flair; Scalped is vicious, bloody, a grounded affair, anchored so deep in the base of humanity it threatens to pull the boat underwater and drown us all. I am devoted to it.

One more page from Scalped. This book deserves much more than this scant mention. Regular artist R.M. Guera delivers impeccable darkness.

Back in the TwitterVerse(a place not unlike Marvel's recent CancerVerse) we fired a few more tweety questions into the abyss but to no avail, everyone was busy making Weiner jokes I assume.

Weiner jokes.

Twitter seems not to be in a position to support my argument for a stabilized numbering system. Organization is a basic thing, in order to not confuse two items in the same category, you number them. TV does it on a season by season basis, season 1 episodes 1-16, some comic books have adopted a similar method such as Criminal, doing story arcs with a name dividing them into issues. "The Sinners, books 1- 6". Dark Horse's BPRD's on this tip, you have "BPRD, The Dead Remembered" issue 3 of 3 but inside the book they make a point to also put "number 79 in a series" so if you want to sit down and read a run of the actual comics as opposed to the collections you have a chronological guideline. Simple. For Criminal you will have to look at publishing dates to figure out which issue one is the earlier issue one. Look, you have to develop some standard on numbering, and the long running 2000AD model(the newest issue being #1736) works pretty damn fine. But I don't think Marvel is wrestling with experimental numbering solutions, I think they are shopping for dollars.

In this economy, and with paper comic sales slipping even previous to people's declining fortunes, publishers need the dollars. It just makes you wish they would step up and say, "Uncanny X-men is being restarted from 1 because we need some cash." Fuck it. Simple. But even with honest marketing does that really change the bottom line in the long term? I'll use a personal example with Batman and Robin. I've been collecting it, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely kicked it off, Morrison held on till issue 16, then it's been running "filler" till the Peter Tomasi/Pat Gleason run begins. I was buying each "filler (sorry that sounds very insulting to the creative teams doing the filling)" issue so I could have a complete run, but with it's newly announced "new number one" when the Tomasi run actually starts, I am dropping the book 2 or 3 issues before it's over. DC is losing money off me with a new number 1. About $6. Marvel already launched a new X-Men #1 last year. Anyone who went and saw the critically-acclaimed-but-I-thought-the-trailer-looked-crappy "X-Men First Class" can pick up a low numbered X-Men floppy. So what's the point? Let's look at some sales figures, we'll use Captain America cause he's been jerked around quite a lot...

Captain America 1 November 2004 67,223 copies sold. (Brubaker scripts, this is considered volume 5)

Captain America 7 June 2005 47,151

Captain America 19 June 2006 47,318

Captain America 25 March 2007 290,497(death of Captain America) Top Book that month

Captain America 27 June 2007 99,046

Captain America 39 June 2008 79,348

Captain America 49 April 2009 63,869

Captain America 50 May 2009 66,928

Captain America 600 June 2009 112,244(book reverts to original numbering)

Captain America 607 June 2010 52989

Captain America 617 June 2011 45400

July has this main Cap book becoming "Captain America and Bucky" with 620, while they start a new Captain America! with a new number 1! to coincide with the movie! Looking at these figures, which do not include digital sales and collections, I think we can predict the success of a new series. Captain America 1 will see around 80,000-100,000 books sold, but a year from now it will in the low 40's. Something else other than the little number in the corner has to change. As if new readers will understand how the hell Cap can block bullets with a shield whether it's issue 1 or 621. By issue 7 it will thankfully be as steeped in history as 627 would have been. The figures above prove that to really make a splash you need to keep killing the characters. So kill them. Brand new issue 1 in which the character dies. Over and over. Returns on investments demand it.

Figures are fun, let's look at the Uncanny X-Men.

Uncanny X-Men 346 June 1997 173,453 (top book of the month)

Uncanny X-Men 383 June 2000 120,672 (top book of the month)

Uncanny X-Men 400 Nov 2001 134,206

Uncanny X-Men 487 June 2007 81,430

Uncanny X-Men 499 June 2008 81,069

Uncanny X-Men 500 July 2008 151,923

Uncanny X-Men 512 June 2009 76,254

Uncanny X-Men 525 June 2010 76,068

Uncanny X-Men 536 April 2011 53,502

All these figures are from Comichron.com, who post monthly Diamond Distribution product reports. This doesn't take into account the addition of books such as X-Men Legacy, Astonishing X-Men, recently just "X-Men", various X-mini's. A wealth of Wolverine'ish books. These guys are still selling a lot of X books. But yes, the bottom line is the industry is sagging, and I am assuming it's the long running fans that are keeping things afloat. The same long running fans who were looking forward to such things as an Action Comics #1000, or more importantly, #999! 987.65?

The earliest print run info i can casually find for an X-Men comic is off the Lone Star Comics website, and it is for X-Men 30...

The X-Men face the Warlock (i.e. the Mad Merlin from Thor/Journey into Mystery 96; not Adam Warlock) in "The Warlock Wakes!" Script by Roy Thomas, pencils by Jack Sparling, inks by John Tartaglione. Thor cameo. This issue contains a statement of ownership--average print run 412,086; average paid circulation 255,070. Jack Kirby/Tartaglione cover. Cover price $0.12.

That's the mid 60's! 412086 copies! And no Twitter to get the word out! Next up we have our in-house cartoonist's newest rectangle, then we'll bury our heads in the past for a while.

PART 2. TAKE ME BACK TO THE PARADISE CITY WHERE THE LINES WERE CLEAN BUT THE SCRIPTS WERE SHITTY. UH, AWESOME.

Wow! Check out the General's choice of word's in panel 7. I'll zoom in for you. Remember "Uncanny" is not added to the title till issue 142 in 1981.

Below is the classic issue 94, the in-numbering bombshell that changed the whole lineup in one swoop. No more jagged a flight path, yet no new plane needed. Well, maybe a new plane is needed after looking at the cover.

All it took was one key out of numbering special, the one and only Giant Sized X-Men 1,

This was the book that brought us Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler, Thunderbird and all these other covers, as if you haven't seen this shit a hundred times...

This new version of Giant Size X-Men 1 just came out. It's s'allrite.

This next one is the first issue cover from the 6 issue series "Deadly Genesis" scripted by Ed Brubaker with art by Trevor Hairsine and it's one of my favorite X-stories. Brubaker was great on this, I'm not sure why his confidence in the face of team books seems to waiver. His ditching of Secret Avengers is a sad moment for us Prince of Orphans fans, though apparantly it does leave room for Warren Ellis to return to toying with the Marvel U.

Here is a page from Deadly Genesis 1, in which Brubaker does his usual mining of history, but this time placing diamonds back in instead of just digging them out. He inserts another team of new X-Men into the timeline just prior to X-Men 94, a team that failed and was massacred on their mission. A tragedy that was unfortunately covered up by Professor X. Brubaker of any writer out there digs into the colloquialisms of his characters and sticks to them. It's believable stuff no matter how unbelievable the context. Track down this six issue series.

That almost brings us up to current X-world business so let's get back to the Now of things. For new stuff I highly recommend Uncanny X-Force. Here's a page from last year's issue one. The artwork by Jerome Opena is quite handsome. Too handsome to last in a Marvel comic?

Opena can't seem to stay on a book for more than half dozen issues(in the mighty Marvel manner) having leaped from Moon Knight to Punisher to here. I don't know what this strategy is. Luckily issues 5-7 were drawn by Esad Ribic and it's powerful work. Writer Rick Remender is channeling some of the best Heavy Metal(the magazine) Sci-Fi vibes for this new X-Force book. It's creepy, gorgeous to look at, and mindbending. And it features a lot of Fantomex, a Grant Morrison creation from his New X-Men run. Fantomex is charming, snide, wears a handsome suit and is pretty good at surviving (and stealing). Thankfully Remender is deepening the mystery on this character where a lesser writer could spoil him fast. All the characters in X-Force have depth to them and are continually grappling with the concept of their morally challenging missions. Here's a Ribic page from X-Force 5, make sure you read the print on there, it's cool.

Ribic is also series cover artist. I love a series with a dedicated cover artist. Well, a good one.

Ribic is off to work in the Ultimate Universe(They haven't given up on that yet?) to kick off a new Ultimates series with Jonathan Hickman. (I think Ribic is better off on X-Force, but Opena is coming back so it's ok.) With Hickman(FF, S.H.I.E.L.D.), Aaron, Jeff Parker(Thunderbolts, Hulk), Matt Fraction(Fear Itself, Iron Man, Thor), Brubaker and Remender Marvel is really delivering a high quality set of comic books each month. If only the numbers of sales reflected this. Here's another current Jason Aaron book, Wolverine. Issue 9, 2011 (not to be confused with Wolverine 9(1989) or Wolverine 9(2004) or Wolverine 9, 2013)

This book is killing it. From the Jae Lee cover to the awesome Daniel Acuna artwork inside and a tight script. Look at this Acuna page. Look At It!

Here's hoping Wolverine sticks to back and forth arcs from Acuna and series starter Renato Guedes. This is a great one two punch of artists.

Damnit, this is going on forever. Speaking of X-Men the recent Age of X story was very entertaining, really good to see artists Clay Mann and Steve Kurth working in tangent, all written by Mike Carey through X-Men Legacy and New Mutants. X-Men Legacy seems to finally have hit it's stride, which it has hit before but usually crumbles in the face of artist change ups. Here's hoping it stays good because Mike Carey can deliver a creative plot and interesting script. Looking forward to this storyline,

It features the return of Korvus, the Berserk(Guts) looking Sh'iar warrior. Oh man, did you check out John Severin's awesome art in Witchfinde........ sheesh. I have to stop.

PART 3. "ISSUE 538 THE ACTUAL REVIEW". IN WHICH ONE BOOK IN 538 IS DISTILLED IN ORDER TO DISCOVER THE QUALITIES OF ITS CREATORS.

A page from Uncanny X-Men issue 538, pencilled and inked by Terry and Rachel Dodson in a soft detail-free style that communicates drama well and fits snugly with the humor that giggles up in the book. I'll refrain from commenting on the quality of that humor. They have some nice visual angle shifts in there.

There is a scene in the previously mentioned Wolverine 9 where an assassin shoots through the earth to kill a target on the other side of the planet. I don't like the scene. Beyond absurd and it sets the bar for this assassin just way too high as he can only shrink in stature from there. But still, this minor guffaw aside, I completely trust Jason Aaron to do a fantastic job on Wolverine and The X-Men. Keiron Gillen, the man behind issue 538 of Uncanny X-Men and soon to be behind the very first issue of Uncanny X-Men in nearly 50 years, I don't trust. Of course I'm drooling drunk on words by now so I'm not trustworthy either, but there is something fundamentally flawed in the worldview portrayed in issue 538. Here is a page Gillen scripted for Generation Hope issue 4. This disturbed artist has his scars on the outside.

In Generation Hope issue 4, the X-Men take a mutant under their wing who has slaughtered residents and destroyed a good chunk of Tokyo. My interest was piqued during the first four issues of Generation Hope because the Akira influence was mammoth and you don't see that in X-Men titles very often. Some obvious thematic Akira-ness in the Salvador Espin pencils above. But if the aesthetics of manga's influence have been absorbed by Gillen and his artists, the moral values have been eschewed. Japanese comics walk heavy with a sense of guilt and social responsibility. This character above, Kenji, says on an earlier page, "The critics always said my underlying influences were obvious and somewhat juvenile." A portrait of this X-Men writer?The X-Men and Kenji all walk out of Tokyo after they destroy it and they don't appear to look back. It's all sort of shrugged off.

This juvenile reality is seen again in the cutesy ending to Uncanny 538, where everything is wrapped up clean and tight. Kitty Pryde's "Permanant Phase" is fixed, her and her boyfriend Colossus (who was earlier gutted) sit on a cliff holding hands exactly where the story started. (While you are reminded by the drawing of robots below that "there is still always trouble around the bend!") The "bad guys" who are beaten in this story, the revenge driven Breakworld aliens, are given a derelict section of San Francisco to peacefully live in even after attempting to kill many of the X-Men. It's all......wrong. Especially in an arc where throats have been slit, multiple people have died, been resurrected and blood has been launched in ever direction. It's silly. Weightless. It feels like a child's portrait of reality. Is Kenji from Generation Hope writing these stories? It's nice when a writer shows some semblance of understanding cause and effect. I miss it here.

And then there is editor Nick Lowe(main editor on Generation Hope and Uncanny X-Men). Is he the one who can't figure out how old he or his readers are? Here's his banter on the letters page.

This stuff would feel more at home in the Tiny Titans book, which again is especially weird given the slit throats. Let's quote a little Nick Lowe from some recent letter's columns, we'll keep it well out of context so he sound's especially insane, "HELLO X-HEADS! KRUUN IS KICKING THE X-MEN'S BUTTS AND THAT ALIEN LADY JUST KILLED KITTY! Oh X-Head's My X-Heads. HARDCORE. STOP PREENING YOUR MOUSTACHE! Both stories are the tasty juice. TASTY JUICE!". I seriously fear for a flagship book under this writer/editor team. And perhaps that's my real issue with this renumbering gimmick. It's not the desperation in Marvel's schemes. It's not the aggravation in seeing a simple system of continuity maligned. It's not the fact that I'm there for more than the story of the day but that I'm reading to celebrate and understand the history that lead to the story of the day. Maybe my real problem is that this team of creators isn't ready to be birthing a new Uncanny X-Men issue 1. A book that is very serious indeed.

Ah, comics blog. It's good to be back, see you in a year. hahaha.

We had a colossal Storm roll through Providence RI the other night. Wreaked some serious Havok with it's 75 mph winds. The night sky was white with lightning. Uncanny.

SECRET AVENGERS 1

2010-06-23T23:59:00.000-07:00

YOU TOO COULD BE PROSPEROUS, HEALTHY, FULL OF RESORTS.

Didja hear? Artists can't write unbiased criticism. They only see their subjects through the filter of self interest as a creator. As opposed to critics. Real critics. Real critics are as pure as new snow, with eyes of a child yet minds learned like the eldest philosopher. They castrate their creativity to write from the place of total mental stillness. Able to see through all walls of personal agenda. They use their pen of young lamb to judge what's best not for themselves, but for all humanity. Such is the powerful power, the terrible responsibility of the true critic.

I have fasted for three centuries, nailed myself upside down to the Tree of Woe, drained my body of every ounce of blood and replaced it with the freshest plastic-bottled spring water. I have removed my corrupted eyes and put in their place the brand new eyes of a just aborted 1 year old baby. My brain, so fouled by the joys of beastial like and dislike, I have placed in a tank of hydrogen peroxide to allow the infection of need and want to be leached from it. From this new vantage point, from this new me, I am ready to speak of comics with the furiously unpoliticized gaze of the Real Critic.

AVENGERS 1, WINNER OF THE SHITTIEST COVER EVER AWARD SHITTIEST BLOG EVER AWARD.

"Oh Jesus that is the worst cover ever. My God. It's so ugly. It's offensively bad." -from "The Critical Book Of Brynocki C" by Brynocki C.

I will begin my career as a Powerful Critic with the most mainstream of mainstream books. Avengers 1. That's a pretty horrid cover yeah? I have heard a remark about certain comic book art being so big and bold it comes right off the page. John Romita Jr often draws so steroided-out his characters are painfully scrunched within the page. Trapped. He should get some bigger paper. Really.

John Romita Jr first came to my attention with his solid run on Uncanny X-men in the mid '80s (roughly issues 175-211) followed by a beautiful run on Daredevil(issues 250-282 give or take a few) with Ann Nocenti, where he began to transform into an artist with a recognizable style. These days his style can get the best of him, with characters occasionally drawn so simple they borderline Lego. But he still holds power, the following page is a good new page by Romita Jr...

Now let's see an even better page from over 20 years ago. Daredevil, the Man Without Fear, issue 260. The man called Bullet takes a dive. Ann Nocenti provided her usual unusually introspective script. Al Williamson provided some tight inkwork.

Romita, aka JRJR did, and still does, draw smashed stuff well. His faces are a different story though, another look at Avengers 1.

Klaus Janson on inks here. Janson's an old Daredevil alum, predating Romita's run by a few years, first inking then finishing the pencils of legend turned lunatic Frank Miller.

What the hell, let's throw up a few more Romita Jr's!

1985's classic "Mutant Massacre" storyline. A great comic, one of Marvel's earliest, and best, events.

From the now famous Kick-Ass. This is inked by Tom Palmer. Another classic dude. I mean no disrespect to Klaus Janson, but I prefer Palmer on JRJR.

Returning to Avengers, team books have a lot to do with the "line up" of heroes in the roster. Avengers 1 has got, though it may change as the team gets settled, Spiderman, Wolverine, Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Spiderwoman, and Captain America. Quite the man heavy line up. Let me look into my criticrystal ball for a final word on Avengers 1.

"I really cannot recommend this book to someone. Unless, like me, you are knee deep in this crap already."-from "Critical Statements on Critical Cartoons" by Brynocki D.

Was that a review?

Next up is New Avengers #1. Right, this is the new "New Avengers" book. The previous New Avengers #1 came out in 2005.

NEW AVENGERS 1 HAS WOLVERINE ON THE COVER OF AVENGERS 1 ALSO!

The new New Avengers #1 is part of the just arrived "Heroic Age" of Marvel Comics. Heroes are back in control again after a long dark period where Norman Osborn, the once and future Green Goblin, was in charge of national security. Osborn's insanity was re-revealed and he fell from grace after he orchestrated a full scale super powered invasion of the recently earthbound city of Asgard(as chronicled in the four issue Marvel limited series entitled simply, "Siege". A strange title as technically there was no siege, only a storming of the castle). The job of National Security is now in the hands of Steve Rogers, the original Captain America recently back from the dead. Or near dead.

New Avengers 1 (and Avengers 1) is written by Brian Michael Bendis, scribe for the 64 issues of the original series, along with a few annuals and a really great Finale issue. The 64 issue series started out pretty exciting and nosedived halfway through becoming a prolonged and repetitive face off with the magically empowered street hoodlum, "The Hood". New Avengers was also a platform where the grade school banter never ceased, Wolverine, Luke Cage and Spiderwoman reduced to spouting juvenile quips at each other. Some people call the Bendis approach "real life talk", and I agreed with that assessment for a while back during his Daredevil run, but now I find his dialogue obnoxious. Not true to the characters portrayed. But when he writes a good book it can be really good, his taste in characters is cool and his plotting is often creative.(Though his endings for books such as Siege and Secret Invasion were less than inspired)

The great thing about writing comic book review blogs so slow is that the next issue comes out before you even finish writing about the last one. SO...

AVENGERS 2. WHEREIN THE EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES STAND AROUND AND CONVERSE LIKE MORONS AND ASSHOLES. FUCK THIS BOOK.

If you can, read this sample page below.

Captain America is a monthly book written by Ed Brubaker and it's a fairly successful comic. Cap, formerly Bucky, is an interesting and somewhat flawed protagonist, enjoyable in the central role. In Captain America issue 606 in an out of costume hang out session with Steve Rogers and The Falcon in a bar, Brubaker has Bucky delivering comfortable lines such as...

"Look, guys. I appreciate the concern...I do. And I know where you're both coming from. I put you at risk yesterday, Sam...and I'm sorry. I've got a lot of stuff rattling around in my head sometimes...I've lived a lot of lives. But I really am fine."

Here is his first speaking page in Avengers 2 as written by Brian Michael Bendis.

The following are the rest of Bucky's lines for the entire issue.

"is this a trick?"

"are you sure?"

"what exactly is happening now?"

"it's wrong?"

"what's going on?"

"why would we have to imagine that?"

"can you get us there?"

"it's broken everywhere"

"listen to the man"

"how did he do that?"

"he was an avenger?"

I put the 2 lines that aren't questions in Bold.

Again I will tap my growing critical powers and present a weighty opinion, from which you should form your own view without ever having read the above slimly discussed work.

"Why did I buy this comic? Why do people read this comic? Why do most of the people I know have the ability to know in advance that this kind of comic is utter crap? Why do Bucky and I both talk like 3 year olds? OK. Avengers is dropped. I am done with it. Time for me to send a message to Marvel, you'll only be selling 99999 of these next month instead of 100000." -"Questions for Time Spent Waiting to do Something" by Brynocki E.

Where was I? Oh, New Avengers. New Avengers 1 is pencilled by Stuart Immonen in his very reliable smooth style. He's got a good grip on designing a page. Though I think inker Wade Von Grawbadger thickens his grace. Check it out.

There's some more Bendis-Speak on the above page. Characters bickering, generally over nothing. Pettiness abounds even on one's own lips. Did I say Prettiness? Immonen draws a pretty Luke Cage! And a seriously weird looking Danny Rand!

That full page above Luke Cage was a scene with "Doctor" Voodoo, the newest Sorcerer Supreme. I prefer his original moniker, Brother Voodoo. Here's the cover of his first appearance, Strange Tales 169, from the almighty 1973.

Brother Voodoo's given name is Jericho Drumm, a name as rad as his newly adopted one. This character is deeply cool. Here's a Gene Colan interior page.

Next is a page from Strange Tales 170 describing the powers Brother Voodoo learned from Papa Jambo, his infinitely wise elderly teacher.

Our Haitian hero's final power comes when he absorbs the spirit of his recently deceased brother, Daniel Drumm. Daniel's spirit has the ability to leave Brother Voodoo's body and possess other people, giving Jericho a second hand when combating jerks like Baron Samedi here in Strange Tales 171.

Doctor Voodoo recently had a five issue series come out from Marvel. Here's the cover of #1.

DOCTOR VOODOO 1. NO ONE SEEMS HAPPY WITH THE NEW SORCERER SUPREME, INCLUDING ME.

I learned an interesting tidbit from an article in the back of the first Doctor Voodoo issue. John Romita Jr, who helped out around Marvel before doing any serious work for them, assisted his father, John Romita, in designing Brother Voodoo's costume! Here in the present day this new series was written by Rick Remender with line art by Jefte Palo. An action page.

So much for Voodoo's traditional rogues gallery. Mainstream Marvel bad guys here. The first issue of this series felt confused. Doctor Voodoo talks like a warped Dr. Strange, the previous Sorcerer Supreme. The comic was heavy on this talk, as Doctor Voodoo meets various people who doubt his ability to fill these large shoes. And I'll confess to be one of them. The attempt to merge these two mystical characters diminishes Brother Voodoo. He is no longer a potential springboard for investigation into this African via Haiti based religion. The initial limits on the character's focus made him interesting. He was and should remain the antithesis of the all encompassing magic of a Sorcerer Supreme. Don't tell me they ran out of cool Voodoo inspired ideas.

Voodoo Dolls used for evil? Or as representations of the Loa(Spirits) of the Haitian Vodou? This following wikipedia-lifted image alone is worthy of a 4 issue mini.

Despite the low sales numbers of this last Voodoo series, now seems like a good time to have a another book starring the Haitian born hero(Doctor Voodoo #1 sold 23000 copies but issue two dropped to 16000, seems like plenty of comics to me. But for context, Avengers 1 was the top selling comic in May 2010, the number's aren't in yet for that month, but the top selling monthly for April 2010 was DC's Brightest Day #0, selling an estimated 129446 copies, according to comichron.com ). Numbers Shnumbers, a special one shot to benefit Haiti starring Brother Voodoo wouldn't break the bank. Marvel should jump on this, spread some social awareness and/or fucked up raw magic. Throw Spiderman in there and all the kids will buy it. But make it weird. He could fight this guy...

Jumping back to New Avengers 1, the bearable Bendis script sets up the book's new direction, Steve Rogers tells Luke Cage he can form his own team and run it under his own set of rules. Even selling him the mysteriously renovated Avengers mansion to house the outfit. The New Avengers until recently were a team in hiding, living in Dr. Strange's Santum Sanctorium or Captain America's secret hideout, but the Age of Heroes has ended that putting them back out legally in the public sphere. The initial team consists of Iron Fist(please please Bendis I make fun of you but keep Iron Fist in the book), Luke Cage, Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye again, Mockingbird, Wolverine again, Spiderman again and last but not least the ever lovable but somewhat boring Thing. Thing's power set brings nothing new but surely his presence will allow for lots of stupid Bendis banter. Whoopee. Anyway what I really want to talk about is the book's cover.

The book was marketed in the comic book stores with two normal priced covers(normal is now $3.99). The standard is shown above, but the second was almost all white. And it looks, uhm, pretty weak. But I bought it. Why? I don't know. It has the same cheesy 1990's-looking "Heroic Age" banner that all current Marvels have across the top and it has this little wooden podium thing at the bottom that says "New Avengers 1". Upon leaving the store with my bright white copy I swung by my garden plot(rented from a nice couple with a an extra lot) to get some fresh greens. It's been raining non-stop and the garden is beginning to flourish.

Gardening is great. It's it's own "Destroyed Economy Survival-System, Totally Radically Organic" or DESTRO.

It's cheap fresh food, costing time instead of money. If you have less work and more time it's the perfect situation. (though you can start to sink some dough into it if you get into the gourmet compost, the fish emulsion and the seagull shit). Gardening reduces stress if you zen out on the small growing things and if you're a pale white comic nerd you get some sun. THE SUN! I need some chickens. I snipped some Spinach. And some New Zealand Spinach(which is not Spinach), Hakurai Turnips, Basil, Collard Greens and some other shit. Stuffed it in my backpack next to the plastic bag with the comics in it and continued home. And guess what. When I pulled that New Avengers 1 out of the bag, the once glowing white cover was smeared with dirt.

The dirt looked ok but as a drawing it need a little more something so I added a dude,

This "hero", Ronin, is not in the comic. But my maneuver is completely in keeping with New Avengers tradition. Ronin first appeared in issue 11 of the 2005 New Avengers, but he was on a variant cover of issue 4 and on the standard cover of issue 7. This is a character that had not even been introduced yet. Previously Wolverine was on the cover of the first issue, but he didn't show up inside the comic till issue 4. Marvel is quite adept at selling metaphoric Cap'n Crunch cereal with Tony the Tiger on it to little kids with no show of restraint. I'm keeping the dream alive.

Ronin is actually an interesting character. You were lead to believe for most of issue 11 that Daredevil was the mysterious black clad martial artist beating ninjas in Japan, but you soon find out it's a woman, the deaf hero Echo, in a man muscle suit. The suit soon passes to Clint Barton, ex-Hawkeye after his reincarnation, and now, it's in Limbo. I hope that it continues to be a suit for heroes, or villains, or anyone that needs to do a job in someone else's skin. A good character concept. My Ronin on the cover of New Avengers #1 could be your mom for all you know.

"As for New Avengers 1, I really cannot recommend it to anyone but the most foolish comic reader like myself though I really want to like it because of the presence of Luke Cage(Power Man) and Iron Fist. If you are a serious, intelligent, handsome newcomer looking to get into some serious, intelligent, handsome new comics, look elsewhere." -from "5000 Indisputable Facts about Comicbooks" by Brynocki G.

SECRET AVENGERS 1, THE AVENGERS BOOK YOU CAN SECRETLY LIKE.

Finally, we get to a 3rd Avengers book that has just debuted. Secret Avengers by Ed Brubaker with Mike Deodato on art and Rainier Beredo on color. I'm a Deodato fan, by page 5 the action is already on, and it's got a little Paul Gulacy in it's genes.

Secret Avengers is Steve Roger's "shadow ops" team of Avengers. The membership looks to be War Machine, Black Widow, the new obnoxious Antman, Beast, Moon Knight, Valkyrie and ex SHIELD agent Sharon Carter. Basically a spy/superteam that along with a few pedestrian members includes a huge blue furry guy, a dude in white tights with a hood and a cape, a flying man with a golden helmet, a guy in a hulking grey suit of armor covered in weapons and a really tall blonde lady wearing a viking suit and carrying a giant sword. I'll quote Steve Rogers at the end of their first 6 page intro adventure, "We won and we're getting away with no one knowing who we are". He's got a skin tight red white and blue suit on with big stars on the chest and shoulders and he's sneaking around Dubai. All in all, a strange ensemble cast for the undercover stealth team.

But it's in the capable hands of Ed Brubaker so you can bet it will be a good read. The first issue is slightly more schizo than Bru's Captain America work as he has more players to juggle. But what's nice about a Brubaker as opposed to a Bendis book is that the characters have enough respect for one another(and the reader) as to not interrupt each other at every turn. Secret Avengers reads smoothly. And there is an extra layer of meaning to this story. Another Steve Rogers quote concerning the evil corporation Roxxon mining in space,

"Amazing...The hubris to sell mineral rights to another planet..."

War Machine responds, "That's the 21st century for you...The future is here, and it's for sale to the highest bidder."

And meanwhile on Mars...

"Secret Avengers is a bold new Avengers book. Its dynamic and dark artwork sparks light and life onto the pages with a tight script capturing subtle traits of our protagonists with seemingly little effort but great understanding. This is one Avengers book that should not be missed. Not merely another nerd-off written by and for comic fans alone. Secret Avengers combines imaginative plotting, a healthy dose of Marvel Universe continuity, and keeps the door open wide enough to let in a general audience. Important for a First issue. Recommended!" -from "Clever versus Smart, comics for people who read comics versus comics for people who might read comics." by Brynocki Z.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON KILLING TREES TO MAKE GENERALLY LOW VALUE SEQUENTIAL FLOP(pie)S.

I'll be honest. I love books. Sitting in the hot sun with a solar charged I-Read I-Roasting your I-Lap so you can sink into the latest JM Coetzee novel sounds like a bad I-dea to me. Bring on the tech sure, but keep planting those trees. I'll read my favorite bleak-horizon novel like "Disgrace" without the fear of some 13 year smartass watching me through my own monitor. A candle, a book, a tent, a forest. Lost in a bad poem. Lost in a dim light headache. One magnet to destroy us all. I read my Blogs on toilet paper and type this shit on a phonetic xylophone.

PS. Here's my other DESTRO. It lives up on the roof. Brother Voodoo stops by sometimes, we summon ladybugs together.

This important piece of literariness brought to you by Marvelous Coma, hyping books that don't need it since 2112.

WAIT, THERE'S AN EPILOGUE.

I have developed a new procedure to extract the essence of a comic book.

CAPTAIN AMERICA 603

2010-04-11T02:00:00.000-07:00

SUBURBAN TEA MYSTERY REVEALS VISUAL VIOLENCE ON WHITE PICKET FENCE

It's amazing how many comic books you can buy each week when you don't have health insurance. Now I don't know if reading about scantily clad dudes with bullet proof skin, healing factors and enhanced strength will impact my immune system, but surely the effort of trying to keep up with Marvel continuity will stave off Alzheimers. Its so great to go into the Public store every wednesday and have so many Options. I ride my bike seven miles round trip to Time Capsule in Cranston RI to pick up my new comics so at least i know it won't be my heart that stops(when i get run over by a cell phone driving a pickup with six back wheels).

ONE AMERICA. You can't post on Captain America without delving into America itself. So lets start with the insatiable record label of Jon Olsen, American Tapes, to set the mood. American Tapes has released, as far as i can tell, 599 items. One repeat offender would be the Michigan band Wolf Eyes, of which Jon Olsen is a member, thats him on the saxophone. I suggest you play this while you scroll down to read the post.

TWO AMERICAS. Thats the title of the new four issue Captain America storyline by the wild and crazy Ed Brubaker. And two issues deep into the story he has already pissed off a portion of one of those Americas. Namely, the Tea Party America. I may be an avid tea enthusiast but thats where my congruencies begin and end with this cadre of penny pinchers. The Tea Party claims their main party line is this, reduce spending. As a person who has never had a credit card i can relate. What i can't relate to is this, why the Party of "no spending" would drop $100000 to have Sarah Palin speak at their jamboree. The well to do Palin is an advocate for war on Iran. So i assume The T-Party(lets call them Tea Baggers) agree with this policy. Well Tea Baggers, war is not cheap. So either every Tea Bagger is an arms dealer or a body bag salesman and stands to make a profit selling to both sides of the conflict, or every Tea Bagger has been horribly manipulated. Whichever way the coin lands, they are, to use a Palinism, retarded. Would Mr. Tea himself even have pity for these fools?

One might think an attack on Iran would prevent more terrorism, as Iran openly funds Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, and as we all know, wants to wipe the "perfectly harmless and fair" state of Israel off the map. Now the U.S. led war in Iraq has at this point produced 100000 civilian casualties. If you figure each one of those people has a relative, or a friend, or a nice neighbor, one might assume that the 100000 people left holding the charred bodies might want to wipe the U.S. off the face of the earth. War Produces Terrorism. Is this disputable? So war on Iran would neither reduce the deficit, nor would it ease terrorism. What it would do is trigger World War 3 in which Israel would be at the smoking center of a long and catastrophic Crisis(and there's no infinite earths this time). I know its more complicated than that, whole books have been dedicated to the subject of peace in the middle east, (and I won't even mention the vast library of comic book blogs on the subject), but the complexity is all the more reason to keep Palin and the gang as far away from the area as possible. So Tea Baggers, put down your placards, stop lobbying for senators across the country in areas you know nothing about, stop inviting racist speakers like Tom Tancredo (he insinuated President Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country") to your pep rallies and try out a new hobby. How about street mime? Write poetry. Learn to paint. Or draw comics. Like Luke Ross and Butch Guice.

Captain America 603. A little story background. The replacement Captain America from the 1950's(he is physically identical to Steve Rogers, the O.G. Captain, but also happens to be arguably somewhat insane) is loose in the American Midwest and has joined up with The Watchdogs, a paramilitary anti-government group, and they have a plan to blow some shit up. Bucky(the new Captain America), teams up with The Falcon to infiltrate and stop this nefarious outfit.

That was Good Cap on the first page shown and Bad Cap on the second(pretty wild "page slipping off the page" layout). Now i am not loving the art by Ross(pencils) and Guice(inks) on this arc, but i am a fan of both of these artists. Captain A. has had solid and stylistically consistent art since Brubaker began his really quite thrilling run 54 issues ago, trading off between Steve Epting, Ross, Guice and even a special Gene Colan issue 601, all of this fused together by Frank D'Armata's subdued color palette for the bulk of the issues. Good old Butch(AKA "Jackson")Guice has done a ton of great work over the years, and his styles got a little bit of Gene Colan in there. From 2008's "Ultimate Origins",

Here's genuine Gene Colan. It's 1969! C.A. issue 117, introducing The Falcon!

Now back to the present where the real action kicks in. A controversy sparked up with issue 602(part 1 of "Two Americas") in which it is insinuated that the Tea Party is racist, as The Falcon debates Bucky's infiltration plan saying "I don't exactly see a Black Man from Harlem fitting in with a bunch of angry white folks". This caption was laid over an image of a Tea Party Rally. A right wing blogger got a hold of it, then Fox news, and then Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada at Marvel apologized, saying it was an editorial foul-up, that C.A. writer Brubaker was not responsible for the words on the signs and that everyone was very sorry.

I'm sure someone apologized for the following Tea Party signs as well but i couldn't find anything.

People sure get creative with their signs! Now, speaking of creative, S.H.I.E.L.D. issue one is out!

Oh No! Now they have done it, they have added this huge history to the SHIELD organization and it includes Chinese people! Damnit, i thought we had a purely American spy group here. The Tea Partiers aren't going to accept this! I got a copy of the black and white version and one of the color version. I pity the fool who spends all his money on comics! hahhahaha!! From the color edition here's a new character, Night Machine!

Artwork by Dustin Weaver, written by Jonathan Hickman. S.H.I.E.L.D., the Marvel Universe's top spy organization now has roots that go back to 2620 BC when a group of Egyptians step up to defend earth from an alien Brood attack. A variety of historical characters, some Marvel Universe creations, others real world figures such as Galileo have been added to SHIELDS's ranks. This first storyline includes Leonardi Da Vinci as a main character and we get to see many of his machine drawings become realized inventions such as a set of mechanical wings for flight. The whole "blend famous real or mythic historical characters into contemporary science-fantasy" approach to comic making is possibly a played out notion these days, but i am falling for it again. I like it. Hickman is really taking the Marvel U by storm with this and the current FF. I heartily encourage people to pick both books up, serious imaginative fun! Hickman's a writer who's actually not afraid to lend his full power to one of the big two companies. He's creating characters for them! And they don't have the same abilities as Wolverine! I guess he has enough self confidence to give Marvel his "all" now and have more "all" for himself later! Here's a spread from Fantastic Four 577. Dale Eaglesham art, Paul Mounts color.

But wait, jump back to two more quick Cap scenes....First in issue 602, to get Bucky into the good graces of The Watchdogs, The Falcon(Sam Wilson) goes into a local bar as an IRS agent from Washington harassing the owner with the threat of an audit. Bucky, undercover as "a trucker passin through town", kicks him out of the bar violently. Its the script for these two panels that really packs a razor sharp political punch.

Hahaha! "Don't forget your briefcase Obama!". And second,

in issue 604, things about face when Falcon learns that a man from Harlem can hang in Idaho! We all learn a lesson in humanity. Gosh, Brubaker must have thought this out! So i take back all those nasty things i said about the Tea Party! We are just one big happy super-sized American family! I'm going to abort this topic and immigrate over to another American Tapes recording artist interlude, Hair Police, suitable for any Party. Go ahead and play it even if Wolf Eyes is not done jamming yet.

THREE AMERICAS. Three more pieces of the American Pie, or more likely, the American Dream(world).

1.Carlos Gonzalez, "Steam Walkway". Carlos was carrying his new comic around in a plastic bag that had some Doritos or something in it. Giving the cover an extra orange shimmer. I am sure it was deliberate, because it's Carlos.

I am not going to reveal too much about this surprising horror mystery, but it involves human metamorphosis, human cruelty, and human love. Its scary, grotesque and quite brilliant and if i were you i would track it down fast, it's probably already gone. Carlos is really a subtle tsunami of ideas and charisma, and we need more of his work, and his presence, in our lives.

2. "Spiderman-Fever". Brendan McCarthy is back on the comics scene, read a rad little interview with him near Here.

The cover doesn't quite McCarthatize me like it should, and this above page is about as wild as it gets in issue one. Its got twisty dialogue with some real funny moments, its got Spidey and Dr. Strange, it's not quite my dream McCarthy book but i enjoyed it. 3 issue mini series. Heres a fairly straight page,

Ok fine, McCarthy's not American, but Spiderman is. And McCarthy sure captured the feel of the country back in the 90's with those Shade the Changing Man covers. It honestly doesn't get any better than this....

Whether or not Fever turns out to be a psychedelic masterpiece, the sky is a little bluer with McCarthy putting out books. (did you know he did a pile of character and vehicle designs for Mad Max 4 "Fury Road"? The movie is finally back in production and may or may not include his work. I hope to hell it does! MAD FUCKING MAX!)

3. The timing for me to be working on this post is amazing, because what set up shop a week ago not 100 feet away from my front door but a good old fashioned traveling Carnival!!!!!

I tried to play this "hit Scooby with a ball and drop it in a basket" game and totally lost. The guy kept calling me "Mike". "Come on Mike, throw it slow Mike!". 1001 nights which is like a 30 foot high metal post with a boat thing on top full of people that goes up and down was broken and someone said an ambulance had been there earlier in the day. Years ago at one of these traveling Carnivals i was pinned up against the wall of the Gravitron spinning a million miles an hour when i caught a glimpse of the dude controlling it. It was the meanest skinhead from Thayer Street, the "hang out" street of Providence. The same skinhead, "Kurt", who had tried to mug me and some friends only a few years before. Well, he handled the 'tron like pro. Can't complain. Dangers aside i love these glittering mini meccas that creep up in the night to entertain and dazzle us and then slip off before the sun rises. Its true magic. My neighborhood has a really large Central American population and they were the bulk of the patrons. All of us together, all immigrants(my ex-English dad became a citizen in the 90's), all spending our hard earned cash on things here in the States. Captain America would be proud.

Finally, I'll leave you with more Wolf Eyes. In full party band mode, and in Providence Rhode Island. Land of the Free.

NO.5 vol.2

2010-02-12T02:17:00.000-08:00

PART 1. THERES NOTHING WORSE THAN DIARY THAT MASQUERADES AS CRITICISM

I went on a trip. Six weeks abroad playing music in Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. It took me 5 and half weeks to realize we were “touring the islands”. The first 12 show chapter of our 33 show "world tour" began and ended in Tokyo, sprouting down and out to Nagoya, Kyoto, Houfu, Fukuoka, Oita, Okayama, Osaka and Enoshima. The journey dawned two, maybe three major impressions on me about Japan. 1. The food is incredible. 2. People smoke cigarettes like there is no tomorrow. 3. I love it there.

As I am now a comic critic of vast fame and glory I decided it my responsibility to document the deep commitment to comics the Japanese display. So I set a goal. I would take photos of dudes or dudettes or whatever reading comics in the convenience stores using the disposable cameras I bought en route. I have a digital camera but I find the charging unit cumbersome, and being in a band with some 2 tons of equipment to load in and out of clubs everyday, any wire able to be left behind helps keep me tethered to sanity.

So with the mission defined, I managed to take this one picture.

Pathetic I know. The cameras had automatic flashes so being sneaky was really difficult. I tried duct taping the flash shut but I swear the whole damn camera seemed to light up. Bottom line, I was scared and I chickened out save a few quick shots through windows. But take my (and everyone else’s) word for it. A lot of people read comics in Japan.

Now this being a review column, and not a travel blog, I want to slightly stick to purpose, and today’s focus is Taiyo Matsumoto. But here’s one last (lengthy, biographic and grammatically incorrect) thing to mention before I get on with it. After 6 weeks of travel induced experiences like eating a living squid that stared my girlfriend and I down while we chewed it’s still squirming tentacles, or running outside of an airport in the November Australian summer sun minutes before the final check-in time looking for a private cargo company in the face of $3700 in Singapore Airlines baggage charges, or riding in the van 12 to 14 hours a day to play every night before spending 2 hours cramming sleep in a cheap hotel(one time we found the famed Australian White Tailed Spider in the bed, one sting and you get an unstoppable flesh eating disease), or having your drumset repeatedly punched by a huge troll-faced, alcohol ravaged British man floating in front of the ocean-like crowd and suddenly finding yourself doing the hardest blastbeats you can on his head instead of the snare(was that my blood or his on my hands at the end of the show?), or simply meeting tens if not hundreds of people from all sorts of places…after all this, reading comics made no sense to me whatsoever. I came home, looked at the stack of unread X-men “Necrosha”, Nova and the gang “Realm of Kings”(Leonardo Manco!), Green Lantern “Blackest Night”(Doug Mahnke!) and all the rest and it felt not unlike a pile of unpaid bills. Should I have just swept them out the door with the dust and the snow that collects in the corners of the mammoth industrial freezer I live in? Should have, maybe, but didn’t. Instead I sat and stared, waiting for the necessary loneliness and dementia to return, and then started chipping away at the stacks.

(All that said, cooking for yourself, which I see as a sign of healthiness and happiness, was also utterly foreign to me upon returning. Its meaning and joy has also since returned.)

PART 2. GETTING WILDER NOW, GETTING STRONGER NOW

One book that made breaking the comic ice after my trip easier was "GoGo Monster", Matsumoto's most recent english translation, but i'll get to that in a second. My introduction to Taiyo(u) Matsumoto was through "Black and White", AKA "Tekkonkinkreet" and it melted my mind. Originally published in 1993 it tells the story of two street orphans who control their piece of Treasure Town through a cheerful violence. It was for me a life affirming work as I, like Black and White, spent much of my time kicking mobsters in the teeth, hanging out on building tops and wrestling with which fucked up hat to wear. Fitting restlessly into the company of Oliver Twist and Tom Sawyer with a solid dose of The Five Deadly Venoms, it teaches that you can do whatever the fuck you want, and maybe even get away with it(if you don't mind occasionally getting the shit kicked out of you). Taiyo tells tale with sharp urgent playfulness, always keeping a grip on the two contrasting personalities of the boys, the naive yet insightful White, and the darkly driven Black. As Treasure Town is enveloped in a slow build fury of deep evil, the innocently vicious duo's connection to the city and its other denizens slowly unravels and the bond between Black and White crumbles. Does it end the tragedy? One of the best comics ever produced. An early page displays the initial relationship between the two mysterious"Flying Cats".

Black and White. GoGo Monster comes across looking like GoGo Goldfish in the raw face of Black and White. Number 5 with its surreal serene psychedelic landscape cannot wrestle the pure power of Black and White.

A common thread in Matsumoto books, characters going over the edge, a scene from that edge....

Things fall apart, blood is spilled, teeth and bone are shattered. Required reading for any punk or wanna be.

PART 3. GO GO GROWN-UPS!!!!

Yuki sees monsters in raindrops and he's not the only one. Plus he has conversations with their leader Superstar, the Boss of the other side, but your going to have to take his word for it cause we can't hear them past a couple word balloons in the first few pages, "Play that silver wand of yours!". So where do these monsters live that Yuki communicates with? Why, up on the top floor, the abandoned fourth floor, where students are not allowed. So thats where we will go! But its when Yuki ends up on the floors above the top 4th floor that things really get weird, at the Black Door....

Matsumoto has the uncanny ability to get inside the head of youth. Maybe he just paints an extremely believable portrait of what I remember or perceive children to be that is actually very unchildlike. But it works. I believe. This comic transports you straight into Japanese Elementary School.

and Every! Single! Page! of this comic is gorgeous.(these pages are read from the right)

Makoto, the new boy in school is the one person who befriends the spacey Yuki. Matsumoto drew those cute little squiggles on his cheeks which ruled cause it was real hard to tell all these young boys apart sometimes!

Ganz is the caretaker of the school. He listens to Yuki and understands the presence of the other side.

I wonder on Taiyo Matsumoto's technique for getting all the reference for this incredibly detailed portrait of a japanese school. Filled with snippets of daily life, various conversations of kids and faculty with the occasional political rant, its as much a document of Japan as a story of a boy's tentative hold on reality. As for that reference technique, perhaps the character "I.Q." with a box on his head was based on a real life Taiyo Matsumoto, creeping about schools with a hidden camera and tape recorder, masquerading as a slightly unhinged rabbit caretaker with a serious interest in Yuki.

GoGo Monster employs a major plot device from Tekkonkinkreet, albeit in a more mature and subtle way. The relationship between two boys falls apart when it becomes clear that one boy must journey to the dark side, the other side.

A scene from the beginning of the tipping point......

The lettering really bothered me at first but i got used to it. Not that that's usually a great thing to say about something or someone.

That sequence sums it all up. For GoGo Monster, maybe Taiyo Matsumoto himself. GoGo Monster is a trip through the all too real unreality of a young dreamer. If you feel the need to compare Tekkinkinkreet to GoGo Monster you can, as the later borrows concepts from the former. I see them each as able representatives of two different points in an artists evolution. Its all about whether you're in the mood for carnage or calm.

PART 4. LETS TAKE ONE LAST RIDE WITH THUNDER

Finally, Number 5! The premise is simple enough. Number 5 of the 9 member Rainbow Council has broken ranks and run off with a woman, Matroshka. Number 1, head of the council, is sending the other members one by one to bring him in dead or alive. It all starts with Number 9 being easily picked off by Number 5. Thats 9 on the "bike", finishing his hunt for Number 5 early.

The 8 page color prelude makes you drool at the thought of an entire Color Matsumoto book.

Number 5 is a strange work that reflects both Tekkonkinkreet and GoGo Monster. A schizophrenic collision of vicious playfulness and loose introspective beauty. At some point in each of his stories Matsumoto begins to pull you through a series of seemingly unrelated hoops, usually at an intense climatic moment when the characters are at a psychological breaking point. What slightly deviates in Number 5 is that the narrative hardly ever relaxes into a rhythm of storytelling for long. The entire book is a challenging ride that you have to hold onto constantly to not get thrown off track. But there are many pages of easy flowing action.

A very touching and comparatively long narrative portion in book two concerns Number 6 and a family he meets on his way to bring in Number 5. He become embroiled in a local power struggle.

In one of the more hallucinogenic passages, Number 4(the siblings) meet number 1(the leader who appears to have a personal vendetta against number 5) in a sort of cerebral non-where. All the members of the Rainbow Council can meet each other on the ethereal plane.

Number 7 is an intriguing fellow, and quite perceptive.

Number 5's story doesn't stick to you like glue as Tekkon and Go Go do, but the details of this work are inspiring and rewarding, its just a little bit of a harder read. Taiyo in this latest is forming an epic, and he is trying to flush out a multitude of characters, and it comes across somewhat scattered. But more importantly, there are 6 other volumes yet to be translated into English! Number 5 was a commercial disaster for Viz when it brought out the first two(of 8) volumes in 2002 causing the series to be canned in the States. I looked for the additional books in Japan on my trip but couldn't find them, not even at the Shibuya Manga Megastore Mandarake!

What the hell happened to Number 5? Who is Matroshka? How are the other members of the Rainbow Council holding up? How cool are their personal fortresses? How has Taiyo Matsumoto's style evolved since 2002? Why, when one novel like GoGo Monster is worth 50 issues of The Avengers, when Borders and Barnes and Noble have enough garbage manga on the shelfs to build a mini Mt. Fuji, when Marvel or DC can squeeze out 6 different Wolva-Deadpool or SuperMan/Woman/Child books a month, when comics inform mainstream culture in unprecedented amounts, why can i not get my hands on current Matsumoto!!?!

PART 5. ALL GOOD AND MOST BAD TRIPS COME TO AN END

I wish GoGo Monster luck in its sales, which if good might grow the demand for Taiyo Matsumoto in the States, which might lead to the conclusion of Number 5. So shout out, "March On International Rainbow Council!" while taking a quick peak at his drawing evolution through his tangential image pages, and then we'll get out of here.

1990's "Zero", untranslated.

1993's "Blue Spring"(Short stories, one of which stars "The Rat and Kimura" from TekkonKinkreet)

1993's "Tekkonkinkreet"

2000's "GoGo Monster"

2002's "Number 5"

FANTASY EPILOGUE OF LOVE LETTER THAT MASQUERADES AS CRITICISM

With so much Manga and Anime flooding the shores of the states you would think that practically every other person you meet in Japan would be a cartoonist. Having met very few artists through the means easily presented to me I went looking, first asking this character I met in a back alley of Kyoto in the former red light district.

Who informed me I should seek out a cat. Cats, as you can see from this page from what may or may not be called "Two Brothers in Japan", an untranslated Matsumoto collection of late 90's short stories(I think), play an important role in decision making in Japan.

A cat soon presented itself to me

"Little Adolf" as he purrpousfully announced his name to be then showed me the door to an underground temple where all the artists live. I tried the door but it was locked.

Upon leaving the temple's impervious gate I found this note left by a Squid Spirit tucked into my pocket, I can only assume it is a curse upon my curious soul.

PS. the animated movie based on "Black and White" is actually really good, but so is this......

MASTER OF KUNG FU 34

2009-10-11T21:55:00.000-07:00

TRAPPED IN A THEATER CHAIR WHILE YOUR LOVE DROWNS

Its a wild world. You can travel to the US city of your choice with your cowboy hat and your stirrups and have a gun fight in a back alley. You can sign up with Blackwater Inc and go murder woman and children in Iraq and get good health benefits as well. Grab a job at the Pentagon or a private firm piloting robotic drone bombers in Afghanistan, 10 points for a grandma! 20 for a pregnant lady! You might even hit a Terrorist! Air conditioned office, ergonomic chairs, free coffee! Hell, sign up to print those huge signs that folks with lots of extra time and solid legs hold outside of family planning clinics, photos of bloody, melted, gnarled, oozing aborted fetuses. Drive home after a long hard day of life-saving life-affirming work to eat a good rare steak, dripping red juice. Beat your kid. Feed the dog. Swing by the church to check out the choir boys. You can sleep under a bridge with homeless families near a halted condo development, or you can peep under a different bridge to see a sanctioned village of sex offenders, each with a scarlett letter stamped on their forehead. You can pray in a circle of your friends around your sick daughter as she dies of treatable diabetes, a display of failed Magic/Kung Fu. You can listen to radio hate-seller Rush Limbaugh spew violence that we can only hope will turn inward on his vacant icy soul, causing a massive, prolonged, agonizing heart attack. His already bloated body writhing in an unseen torture, as his inner demons "blow off some steam". He can broadcast the grunts, the groans. I will turn on my receiver, I will amplify his final address, the hospital gets caught up in paperwork but he will live on in some fashion.

But, in the US centric world mentioned above, can you actually fly to a mysterious island and look down amongst the foliage to see a giant boot shaped house, a disney-esque castle on a small mountain and a geodesic dome surrounded by giant toothy peaks? Populated by Robots? Not unless its 1975 and you are Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu and your lady has been taken to The Island Of Mordillo!

Doug Moench writes and Paul Gulacy draws this radical martial arts drama. This next image introduces Brynocki, one of the best characters ever. You can see the interplay between Mordillo in the orange tunic and Brynocki, who really seems to be in charge of the operation. Shang Chi's soon to be love interest, Leiko Wu, whose normally black hair is red just in this issue, has been lassoed. The hair color change I assume is due to the angle of the sun and the island's particular pollen...

Humpty-Dumpty attack

Issue 35

BRYNOCKI!

tragedy in the end for our villains

You can listen to WORLD-CONQUERING hate-seller MORDILLO spew violence that we can only hope will turn inward on his vacant icy soul, causing a massive, prolonged, agonizing heart EXPLOSION. His already HANDSOME body writhing in an unseen torture, as his inner demons "blow off some steam". BRYNOCKI can broadcast the grunts, the groans. SHANG CHI will turn on HIS receiver, HE will amplify his final address, the hospital gets caught up in paperwork but he will DIE on in some fashion.

A few years later, in issue 73, Shang Chi returns to Mordillos Island, now even weirder!!!! This one written by Moench and drawn by Mike Zeck.

That's Brynocki in the armor!!!!

Mike Zeck did a long string of really cool G.I.Joe covers in the 80s. Hey wait, is that Shang Chi in Snowjobs arms?!!!?

Master of Kung Fu is in a state of permanent reprinting limbo as it uses many characters created by and originally licensed from author Sax Rohmer, such as Dr. Fu Manchu and Sir Denis Nayland Smith. Now, if Kloosterhouse and Johanknecht can invent Wite-out I'm sure Marvel can get around the slight problem of naming rights, it would be nothing so dramatic as a "Reboot" and could always be explained away in a sort of "Crisis of Infinite Copyrights" maxi-series. With a large Wite void enveloping all Rohmer based information. Lets take a swing at a solution......

First we get the setting from MOKF 48, Fu Manchu's City in the Top of the World

Then we apply the technique.....

As you can see, i adjusted not only the name, but the physical attributes of Fu Manchu, covering all copyright bases.....now get the reprints rolling!

Here is an interesting connection, another island, this one drawn by the argentinian artist, Guillermo Mordillo

Mordillo also has a penchant for drawing toothy mountains....

A quote from Shang Chi himself on the subject, "Thus, for one man to enter the realm of another man's mind is to invite madness to play host to a guest of madness. All thoughts, then, become madness in the mixture...even to the thinkers themselves"

Now when you get started on surreal islands of deep mystery you can jump into The Prisoner, Lost or probably a pile of awesome output, so in fine modern form I will not think too deeply on that subject and deviate to try and picture just what is happening in that Giant Boot on Mordillos Island, I'll bet its something like this......

These guys have a fantastic song called "DESTROY AMERICA!"

FANTASTIC FOUR 567

2009-09-27T18:34:00.000-07:00

RHYTHMIC COMIC SELF INFLATES FRIEND'S LIFE-RAFT

So just how is Mr. Fantastic going to save the earth from global warming? Word on the street is that in fifty years half the world's plant and animal species will be wiped out by rising sea level. Believe it? Still going to buy that house on that low lying land? I'm not. I'll be looking to the hills when I empty my penny jar to see if I managed to collect 100,000 bucks for a Providence house. I have multiple jars of pennies. and I grew up in the 80's. I was not allowed to watch the apocalyptical-nuclear-war-made-for-TV movie "The Day after Tomorrow" due to parental fear of nightmare inducing melting face scenes. But I can see the future and know that humanity is fucked. My decisions are and have been influenced by impending doom. If its not nuclear war, though it still could be spawned by a ridiculous yet serious standoff between a few ancient and corrupted religions, its the terrorist dirty bomb at the mall. Ten thousand planes downed into the power plants of all the major economies. Twelve million shoe bombs explode in the sky on a well timed sky diver assault raining down a poisoned liquid LSD causing last minute hallucinogenic journeys before, yes, our faces melt off. Or it could be plain old simple global warming. Because we just can't stop making sneakers, sodas, bloggy computers or driving our kids to soccer camp. I used my cell phone to call and complain about my headache from all the crisscrossing signals flashing through my brain. Mass cancer kills cancerous humanity. How many will escape using a succession of cloned bodies mounted into small spacecraft built by disgruntled ex-Nasa and Nazi scientists. Few. A pile of politicians, hip hop stars and champion tennis players. Fated to have an oxygen depleting argument on mars debating who will dig the compost pit for the outhouse.

Which brings us back to The Fantastic Four. Has Mr. Fantastic solved this yet? I am not an FF fan. i read a select few of the awesome Kirby issues. A bunch of the super cool Byrne issues. A few here and there say if Art Adams was drawing one or suddenly the whole team was replaced by new less boring members. And then i read the Millar/Hitch run. I am into Bryan Hitch on this title. Sure some of the seriously fun ideas presented in the run such as Nu-Earth, The Hooded Man and the new Defenders, Marquis Of Death and Doctor Doom's death's-door feverdream were probably Millars receipes. But Hitch brought it to life. Tracing photos, getting his sister and his uncle to hold a pose all day, i don't know. His page layouts are exhilarating. This one is almost seasickening......but its readable.

But then you have this. A where's Waldo moment. Guys, I know you are rushed to the point where both Millar and Hitch, despite claims that they wanted to make theirs as great as Byrnes run, ditched out on the title before it was even done amounting to a painful downward spiral of quality in issues 568 and 569, but please. for the issues you do work on, please please hit the "trace photograph in ink" button or whatever before you go to press.....

Pretty pathetic. lets end on a good note. I love the library and this one looks awesome!

Most FF fans would call me an FF tourist. I am sticking with it for the Hickman/Eaglesham run so far and two issues in its great. "Mr. Fantastic solves everything". Will I find hope in this comic book to guide me through my current range of personal issues? I need to dig through my closet for an extra Infinity Gauntlet. Didn't these foolish multi-Reeds read Cosmic Odyssey? Only evil will come from that glove.

It doesn't take a Future seeing Bridge device to know that doom is at hand, and not Doctor Doom. Generation Degeneration knows. Thats us. born after 1973. I'll be the cutoff year. No, Born after july 22, 1972. The day Bruce Lee died is the day the earth changed course(exactly one year to the day before my birthday). Hmm. Maybe born 1969. That seems like great year to have appeared in. Doom. Mat Brinkman knows it. Is there anyone out there who has not read his Multi Force? Really? Best re-released comic of 2009. PictureboX books. Essential. No bias here.

Somebody needs to bang on Brinkmans door with one of those $20000 dollar Pantheon book deals and he'll cave and draw comics. Anyway, the whole point of bringing this up is that i don't think the current FF are dealing with the real problems at hand. Its time for some new recruits in that good old Marvel Fashion. We need to up some sales.

PRESENTING THE ALL NEW, ALL DIFFERENT 2009 FF........

INVISIBLE WOMAN

Frank Santoro.

Many of you know him as the "Wise Elder" dude on Comics-Comics who talks a lot about "The Golden Triangle" or "The Golden Shower" or some ancient design tactic. But us close to him know him as "the dude who spends every waking moment thinking about color separations while standing knee deep in the rising waters of his flooded basement". Cold Heat is a trip. These are pages from issue 5/6. 7/8 is out but not in..... my house.

MISTER FANTASTIC

Jungil Hong.

A fellow smallest state artist, she is on display at Mountainfold gallery in NYC for her solo show "Growl Fowl". I implore you my faithful readers to take a spin over to the 18th floor of 55 5th avenue before it closes on October 16th. You need to see the depth of texture that marks her work. Detail only a cricket can see. Definitely part of the "Scrunched Figure" movement out of Rhode Island. There is nothing self serving in my message. My only endorsement and paycheck is from Marvel Comics(which i need with the utmost haste to pay for all the giant sized $4.99 copies of Old Man Logan i will buy to give to my relatives at Christmas). oh, more Hong HERE and THERE. and.....

THE THING
Richard Corben. Starr the Slayer, the new Marvel Max mini based on a one off story in 1970's Chamber of Darkness issue 4 by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor Smith. This new take is written by Daniel Way. I was bored silly by Ways year and half Ghost Rider run, slightly interested in his ongoing Wolverine Origins book, but totally psyched on Starr the Slayer. Somehow Way and Corben mindmeld on this one.

if you push on the pages goo comes out. Corben the magic man.

THE HUMAN TORCH
Rashied Ali. Drummer.

Ali plays on one of my all time favorite records. "John Coltrane, Interstellar Space". A drum, saxaphone duet. Here is one of those weird Youtube clips where they show an album cover and have music. I didn't understand why people do this till now.

but lets get a little live weirdness in there too......

"

So as Rorshach claims is the end nigh? Obama may be able to talk down a giant meteor on a collision course for us or an alien invasion fronted by a green goliath on a stone ship. Or regular humans may be able to think/act for themselves and make an escape balloon-pod out of supermarket plastic bags and discarded cell phone chargers. There may be hope. But today its all about Rashied Ali. If he hadn't jumped ship i would feel better about everything. RIP Rashied.

PS. If I were you i would press play on both YouTube videos and adjust the volume accordingly. Then smush your face into the screen and stare at Franks closing pattern....

NEW AVENGERS 49

2009-09-14T00:24:00.000-07:00

BEAUTIFULLY CALLOUSED SKIN, DRAWS WRONG CONCLUSION

What points me once a month to the comic known as New Avengers? Brian Michael Bendis's supremely naturalistic dialogue? Spidermans sleek and asexual body structure as revealed through his second skin of a costume? or is it that i just like Luke Cage?

It's Cage.

Its sure as hell isn't point A because generally this comic is a joke when it comes to dialogue. Wolverine, Ms. Marvel, Captain America. All reduced to quibbling teen agers. Oh the angst of these poor anti heroes! Thank god we all buy it and pay Bendis to turn in the same script every month.

Well, except this month. Avengers 49 is a solid comic. Perhaps Bendis is actually intimidated enough by Luke Cage as to not walk all over him with synthetic banter. The story focuses on Cage making a deal with Norman Osborn to get little baby Cage back from the skrull Jasper in the wake of the Secret Invasion.

I like Billy Tan's work. He eeks some personality out of his faces. Enjoyed his short run on Uncanny X-men with Brubaker.(wonder why they disappeared off that title so quickly?) Under their hand the X-men were acting like people again, instead of characters.

There was one missed opportunity in New Avengers 49. Here is a nice sequence including a "lost page" I found in a alternate reality wigwam which depicts what should have happened.

speaking of dimensional page enigmas i found another variation of Angar the Screamer as seen in Daredevil 100. lets take a look at the OG again.

this version which i think was drawn by my 5 year old neighbor Mickey Zacchilli...

well, she actually may be older than that. she has published some comics, handprinted silkscreen cover xeroxed inards style. Back cover of "Bullshit Frank and Gorilla Joe" issue 4.

next is an interior page of "BSFAGJ #4". Joe transforms into a pony. or was he a pony all along? Zipatone?!?!!

The pony reminded me of Gary Panter and Jimbo in Paradise. One of the best books ever created. Lets look at Gary's pony, it got a little cut off at the bottom....

Jimbo would help Luke Cage get his baby back from aliens. Or perhaps offer himself up to be experimented on in exchange....

Sorry Gary, but i hope you never make it to the land of straight sticks.

I drew the "E" in there so you would not think its called PARADIS. my scanner is run by DARK REIGN

DAREDEVIL 100

2009-08-24T13:41:00.000-07:00

DAREDEVIL 100 HALLUCINOGENIC UTOPIA

DD #100 volume 1 is a set up issue. an origin issue. and even a reflection of period stereotypes. It has virtually nothing in common with DD #500 except the presence of the red costume. In #100, written by Steve Gerber and illustrated by the one and only Gene Colan(the work, inked by Tartaglione, is not Genes best), DD is the wise cracking pre-Frank Miller version. This era of DD gave the hero, and the comic, the ability to stretch out of character, to veer off the dark dirty city streets into flights of fantasy. It allows DD to joke about the world. A virtue virtually gone in current DD characterization. Issue #100 acts as an origin summary, as DD recounts a few bits of his history to a Rolling Stone reporter, until a mass hallucination hits the Rolling Stone office and the streets of San Francisco. This is 1973 Marvel Comics.

The San Fran hippy hallucination theme recently revisited an Uncanny X-men story leading to their issue #500 relocation to San Francisco. Hippy Vision Seizes Reality. Distorted Utopia. The X-Men worked it out quick over a few short issues, destroying the invasive dreamworld. Uncanny has since further devolved into a Dark Avengers/Dark X-men/Norman Osborn showdown on the SF streets(this arc is titled Utopia) with an undercurrent of early 200's X-men anti-mutant hysteria fueling the violence.

Fraction has barely touched the idea of a liberal San Franciscian Utopia for mutants. Readers are told SF is welcoming to mutants, but shown very little in the 14 issues since their arrival. Mutants hanging out in a bar? Utopia! "Utopia" is the tale of the mutant haven of SF falling apart. But where is the garden on the compound tended by Storm? The art classes taught by Colossus? Spiritualism as taught by Nightcrawler? The drunk poetry slams of James Logan(who i refuse to call the uninspired name of James Howlett). What is there to really fall apart? All we get is the overplayed Norman Osborn stomping into the city with his newfound half hero/half villain agenda. The Marvel U. has been held hostage by this guy, who inherited the throne of Shield(now Hammer) and now defends the nation. Do you care? you shouldn't. Anyway, Uncanny needs to slow down and take stock. The art in #514 was dynamic and fist pumping, if not a bit too gooey. Bold and cartoony. kind of gross honestly. Terry Dodson. Surely a fan favorite. He can draw!?

I do commend Fraction on his final page, which hints that the X-club (formerly led by the now incarcerated Beast) has built an undersea headquarters for the X-men just in time for their impending exile from SF. Looks like a cool base. Totally G.I.Joe. Totally Lost. I mean it i am psyched. Maybe the X-men will journey to the center of the earth. all the way.

But back to the San Fran of DD #100. A slow issue if there ever was one, nothing really happens except the grand finale intro of Angar the Screamer.

Badass. Its a subdued anniversary issue, but unlike the fantastical yet "realistic" DD #500, DD #100 is grounded in the 1973 of today/yesturday. Along side of the blind swashbucklers make believe world we get a (small)mirror of society, i should know, i was age 0-1. But damn, to jostle topics, Michael Lark does have some sweet layouts with #500.

I mean that shit is dynamic. But maybe there is something i can fault DD#500 for, its perfect synthesis of DD legacy leaves no space for a portrait of America. No glimpse into the state of the world. Does Brubaker have a dream for Utopia?

UTOPIA?

DAREDEVIL 500

2009-08-22T22:32:00.000-07:00

DAREDEVIL 500 IS EXISTING, NOT FOR THE BLIND

Matt Murdock was the second most important character in this mega-issue. Master Izo has shown us his legacy and we are happy he invited us in. finally, why not a drunken kung fu master to brighten the day with mixed up morality. Marvel should have introduced this off-kilter warrior 35 years ago. Frank Miller(in his saner years) gave us Stick, Murdock's mentor, and now Stick has a mentor of his own and we are all the wiser. Izo, the many-hundred year old ex-leader of the Hand. It seems that writers since Miller have been unconfident to push FM's additions to the DD mythos till now(other than Electra). Even Turk gave us a glimpse of humanity in this issue. Tis a sad day that Brubaker has given us his best story and packed his bags all in one. Like Immortal Iron Fist, the subtle grasp of character and history may plummet with his departure. Michael Lark, i fear what follows, your solid composure illustrated a sordid dark gritty New York. A textured city. A balanced graceful Daredevil. I have i think 450 of these 500 issues in my possession. small treasure. Daredevil, Man without Fear, must I fearlessly collect the last 50 or so floppy format comics, from that ugly section of history known as issues 300-380. those cheap days better be over. DD 500 is a prize.