Let’s say you like comics. Let’s also say you’re gay. Let’s go even further and say that you’ve spent some time in front of Xtube participating in your own personal Tubesock Holocaust the likes of which would make Onan himself stop and go, “Wow.” Pushing the “what if’s” past the bounds of good taste, let’s finally say you enjoy the Underworld series. Sean-Z’s MYTH #2, then, is probably for you. However, if you are a savvy politico who keeps abreast of current gay events, MYTH #2 is definitely for you.

Ostensibly a story about the often-naked Zithyran V’riel and his quest to locate and reawaken his world’s gods, MYTH also reflects an important part of the gay cultural dialogue that has long gone unaddressed: namely, the equal and opposite reaction of gay opponents to Marriage Equality. As important as Marriage Equality is as a civil rights issue, there is a faction within the gay community that does not embrace it as step forward, but rather as a white flag to the heterosexual hegemony (say that three times fast!). In essence, gay culture will die under the trappings of “normalcy” – spouses, children, split-level houses, and dogs that do no fit into a shoulder bag – finally losing our sense of “special otherness”. I’m not saying I agree with this, nor do I presume to know Sean-Z’s political leanings; nevertheless, he gives us an alluring, profound, and often exciting look at the Marriage Equality counter-argument.

Sex will always be a part of the gay identity, mostly because we are both self- and other-identified through our sexual behavior. In terms of the heterosexual (i.e., “other”) identification, I would even argue towards “over-identified and bordering on unhealthy obsession” (I’m looking at you, Matt Barber and Peter LaBarbera). One only need glance at any number of postings by anti-gay groups to see that their fevered imaginings are far more pornographic and detailed than anything the average gay male has experienced. Why then is it important to have the discussion of “marriage” at this time? Wouldn’t Marriage Equality kill the gay sexual drive, as any number of late night TV wags have said it does to straight marriage? What would become of gay culture as we know it? Obviously with so profound a question mark directly in our path, it makes sense that some people would try to apply the brakes or jump out of the vehicle altogether.

In MYTH, inhabitants of the world Zithyra and their gods are comfortable with their bodies enough to go au naturel (and with their bodies, who wouldn’t be?) and are obviously queer. In choosing to arrange his universe this way, Sean-Z opens up two interesting points: one, that somehow the race propagates, and two, that there is no stigma attached to being queer, so we are left to judge “good” and “evil” by their respective behaviors. The “evil” side, the one that represents Marriage Equality proponents, is populated by vampires, draining the life of others to make it their own. I’ll admit the characterization is on the harsh side, but one can feel the sense of betrayal that V’riel has towards the head vampire, Donjovan Faust. I hope in future issues to see the past of their relationship. The “good” side is seen in V’riel and his mecha servant Koz (which brings to mind the colloquial “cuz”, so I’m left wondering about the implications of man-on-machine sex), who rescue a god (called a “Maker”), Julian, and his friends from a fire at a bar called “The Raunch”. The good guys are sexually liberated and for most of the book are naked and/or on teh cock like a GOP Congressman at an out-of-town convention without his wife. It’s a canny metaphor, and one without clear answers. While we root for the good guys, we can’t help but notice that the bad guys are just as hot and just as motivated to prevail.

Whether you are pro-Marriage Equality or feel that it will be the ruination of “gay”, Sean-Z’s compelling MYTH #2 will force you to take a long hard look at the future as it lays bare before you.

I can tell already that Robert Kirby’s new series, THREE, is going to get a lot of mileage out of its title. So many good things come in threes – like wishes and bears and the hot soccer triplets down the street whom I fervently know are 18 years old – or multiples of three – like a six pack (a three pack would look weird with a partnerless odd-ab-out) and… no, a six pack is the pinnacle of all things “six”, I’d say. And to begin his latest anthology venture (the sublime Boy Trouble book preceding), Robert and two other cartoonists – Eric Orner and Joey Alison Sayers – each offer up a story of a moment. Filed under “s[tuff] you can’t make up”, I’m tempted to say there is a semi-autobiographical revelation that comes from these moments. Whether by accident or design, there is a theme of “one” in each cartoonist’s work (yeah yeah yeah, it’s also issue number one) that has the ring of verisimilitude which I say can only come from personal experience. Like so:

Weekends Abroad by Eric Orner sets the bar high for every story in every issue including and following this one. Ostensibly a tale of what an American Jew working in Israel does on the weekends (cruise guys on the Internet, go to clubs, get laid), Weekends is a sad story. Not suicide levels of sadness by any means, but I feel for the nameless protagonist. And that is my point in a nutshell: can it get any lonelier for this cartoon stranger in a strange land who doesn’t speak Hebrew and who can’t find a decent guy to schtup than we readers not even knowing his name? I doubt it. There are moments of comfort, but the anonymous hero isn’t part of them – Markot games, Vox, finding the mysterious graffiti poet; he’s an observer. But, as with most things, there is grace in the end.

Joey Alison Sayers’ Number One is an odd piece, but it made me laugh. My six-year old nephew is going through his “bodily noises and functions are funny” stage, and, yes, my brother and I are encouraging it, not only because burps that scare birds out of trees are funny, but also because they’re natural and everyone does them (we’re trying to avoid any kind of shaming issues). Recently, the three of us were at Sara’s, a local beach-front hamburger “stand” which has my favorite ice cream in the world: soft-serve orange sherbet, when my brother belched unexpectedly, like, “Kronos eating his children too fast” belched. We all started laughing then realized a woman and her daughter sitting next to us were chuckling along. Scott was immediately embarrassed and apologized for interrupting their meal, though I have to give him credit for not stopping laughing. The mother said she looked over because she thought her son was nearby as he also doesn’t cover his burps in public. My nephew and I were amused by this, like, groundling amused. This is the charm of Number One: we’ve all been there.

Robert Kirby’s Freedom Flight rounds out the issue with another story about loneliness in the middle of a crowd. Drew has always wondered what it would be like to disappear, so when his boyfriend blows him off to work one afternoon, Drew leaves their apartment to meander around NYC. Kirby’s “one” could be seen as a companion piece to Orner’s, but much darker. In both stories, the protagonists are lost in the Big City, mostly because they’ve never been connected to it. But unlike Orner’s leading man, whose interior monologue connects his past to his present and to his future, Kirby’s Drew cycles around and around in a never-ending present, an existential “Groundhog’s Day”. And finally, there is no grace to save his Drew in the end: “one” simply becomes “none” (worse, “no one”). It’s a sucker punch in the gut, to be sure. It’s also honest and real.

Robert Kirby promises this is the first issue of an on-going series (a promise backed by the art samples for #2 on the final page) with contributions from old and new names in queer comics. It’d be a shame to not get on-board for this sure-to-be spectacular ride now. Order a copy of THREE here as soon as you reach the period at the end of this sentence.

In brief: See it, but pretend that someone else is playing Scott Pilgrim.

Too gay to be straight?

Several weeks ago, there was a minor rhubarb in the gay blogosphere when Ramin Setoodeh of Newsweek suggested that Sean Hayes, co-starring opposite Kristen Chenoweth in Promises, Promises, ruined the play because his gay was sparkling through what was supposed to be a straight character. I’m going to suggest the exact same thing about Michael Cera in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Dude acts like a lady. I’ve seen him in similar movies about disaffected and intensely understated teen love – Juno springs immediately to mind – which end in emotional waterfalls of caring and empathy, but I’ve never actually bought it from him. I’m now convinced it’s because is ways too subtle for the conscious mind to perceive, he was actually projecting his love for J. K. Simmons. (And who wouldn’t?) Never having read the manga-books, I wondered for the first thirty minutes if Cera’s lispy and breathless performance was foreshadowing Scott’s coming out later the film. Even his roommate, uber-slutty manbanger Wallace, in a metafictional moment says of him, “And you think I gay up the place too much?”

Is Cera really gay? Is he really straight? Who knows? Who cares? All I can say is, he needs to butch it up there a little and step out of his “less is more” schtick or he’s going to be typecast in the way of D J Qualls who is mostly famous for being Holocaust-thin. That or, ya know, he can start up a production company with Chad Allen. “Cerallen” or something mish-mashy like that.

Too hip to be square?

And speaking of disaffected. Is the… I dunno, are they still called “hipsters”? What is the generation of Xbox addicts and lonely souls in skinny jeans and pork pie hats called? Someone let me know, but until then I have to ask, is the Hipster Revolution over yet? I’m kinda tired of them. Yeah yeah yeah, my generation had the spotlight held up to our disappointments in The Breakfast Club, but kids these days remind me vaguely of kids from my college days who didn’t have jobs or any visible means of financial support but who still managed to be dropped out of helicopters to snowboard down mountains.

Holy crap. I’m my father…

Scott Pilgrim and his friends are like that (not my father; the previous thing): they don’t do much, but their days are full of activity – playing video games, wearing ironic t-shirts, faking suicides, trying to get signed with a music label, making much ado about trivia, and muddying the waters with their unexpressed emotions in a self-conscious way. Of all the gang, only Kim (Allison Pill) has the facial chops to pull off the seething cauldron of rage and resentment that threatens to bubble over at any moment. Scott himself is dating a high schooler – 17-year old Knives Chau – because he wouldn’t get any play otherwise. Though he wants to hang out with her, and they have a simpatico ninja-ass kicking video game technique, it’s awkwardly apparent that the power dynamic between them is WAY off. In one moment, Scott literally freezes his affections towards Knives until she obsequiously puts more quarters into their arcade game then he continues as if she had done nothing wrong. Yeah, right away, I didn’t like Scott (the character, not Michael Cera), but I’m certain I wasn’t supposed to like him, otherwise how could he grow into a better person by the end? Thinking of it, the ladies of the film were actually far superior to the boys in every way, not only as characters, but also as actresses. Knives (Ellen Wong), Kim, Stacey (Anna Kendrick), and Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) are part of what I’m calling “Hit Girl Syndrome”: “when a secondary female character upstages the male lead in every scene.” (I’ve already submitted it to Urban Dictionary, bitches.)

I think the only current cultural obsession missing from the movie was zombies (seriously, it even had a bacon moment! I don’t think even Twilight had a bacon moment.), but it did have winged Japanese succubi in sailor outfits. Is that almost the same thing? Is Scott Pilgrim too, almost cynically, relevant?

What’s a meta for?

None of this movie is meant to be taken literally, postmodern bitches.

+8 Balls

It may not seem like it, but I enjoyed this film a lot. I could relate to the story and the difficulty of forming relationships in what is now the 128-bit digital age (yeah, the NES graphics are part of the metaphor, too.), and though I wasn’t moved by the characters, I was certainly touched by their woes. Had it been directed by anyone other than Edgar Wright, it would have been forgettable, maybe even terrible. But Wright brought all the charm of the comic book medium to the screen as literally as was possible, and in doing so kept the usual translation problems to a minimum. Perhaps Neil Gaiman should have a sit down with Wright before Anasi Boys goes into pre-production.

A-

Jon Macy’s adaptation of the early gay pornographic work Teleny into the graphic tome (seriously, I could kill a cat with its heft) Teleny and Camille seethes. It churns. It tugs. It traps all things beautifully gay and all things terribly gay then challenges the reader to not look away. I’m sure many will see this novel only for the love story, but what Jon has given us is a vision of how much and how little we gay folk have changed in the 100-plus years since Oscar Wilde (allegedly) and his band of lavender men wrote the original novel in round-robin. It’s a FAR superior execution of the idea behind Francis Ford Copolla’s Dracula: Victorian context, modern subtext. (I have to thank my brother for this succinct metaphor.)

The story is a simple one: boy (Camille) meets boy (Teleny), and they begin a secret yet intense love affair that knocks Camille out of his perennially heterosexual life and into the clandestine London homosexual world. But there’s so much more than that. Even in 2010, the gay world is somewhat invisible, almost like a Wonderland that isn’t seen until someone falls down the rabbit hole. Yeah, people are aware of Teh Gays, but they have no idea how subversively ubiquitous we are until it’s pointed out to them. A dear, dear friend of mine knew me for years before I mentioned the local bathhouse in Austin, TX to her, and when I did, I thought she was going to have a stroke. What she couldn’t get over was that it’s located right next to a major shopping mall on a major street. She’d seen it a million times, but never knew what it was for. So it goes with Camille. After becoming involved with Teleny, the scales fall from his eyes and he stumbles upon homosexuality everywhere. But when you look into the gay, the gay looks into you. Camille is no longer able to hide his nature (though he does try at times).

I won’t be the only person to say this (though I hope I’m the first): Jon’s art is the sensual motifs of Aubrey Beardsley with the grotesqueness of P. Craig Russell (though it lacks PCR’s cool detachment from said grotesqueness). I’m sure by now that everyone knows NOM’s Tour of Hate is crossing the nation, preaching the sanctity and sturdiness of a “one man, one woman” marriage and the horror that is Marriage Equality. But if one looks back over just this past year, there have been shocking abuses in these “sanctified” marriages ranging from mundane adultery to selling children in Wal-Mart parking lots. The hypocrisy rankles me, but it seems to be “OK” with Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown because straight people are perpetuating the abuse.

Stay with me. I have a point.

Teleny and Camille calls this hypocrisy out, or at least recognizes that straight people don’t get a free pass by virtue of where they insert their genitals. In his youth, Camille visited a brothel with friends before they all left for college. The night ended… let’s say, “poorly” for one sad prostitute. Yet there is no condemnation between Camille and his friends for being in the brothel in the first place (to say nothing of the dead whore). As an adult, Camille accidentally wanders into a cruisy section of a park, calling it a “modern Sodom and Gomorrah”. Yet, what is the difference in these locales and the behaviors except the attitudes which accept or reject them? Wilde and company were making a point then that we’re still trying to make today. Consciously or unconsciously, Jon does some editorializing in these scenes. Most of his pages are not made of composed art inside panels in a certain disposition, but rather the pages themselves are full compositions, whole art. However, in these scenes (and one or two others), the pages break apart in a sense. Panel dominate the landscape, and Jon’s lines change from fluid and expressive to harsh and… like barbed wire in 3-D. Grotesque. They fit the scenes perfectly, but they jar the eye.

And don’t even get me started on how much I think Jon hates poodles.

Where the story and the art meet is in the sex. The sex in Teleny and Camille is more than just hardcore porn. Yeah yeah yeah there are engorged penes and money shots that could blind a treeful of squirrels, but it’s not gratuitous and definitely not there for a cheap thrill or (even worse) page filler. The sex has meaning and purpose and emotion behind it. Some of the emotions are lovely and expansive; others are more bothersome, but still need to be there.

One thing I must thank Jon personally for is his ending. THANK YOU, JON!! Your indictment against the trend in gay literature that “even the one’s written by the gays” require a tragic ending because “it’s like we’re too damaged to even dare imagine being happy” is difficult to refute. So many stories dwell on death for obvious reasons, but even pre-AIDS gay media fall to either Boys Beware or Cruising-type idioms. It’s refreshing to have a gay love story with a happy… well, at least an ending without murder, death, or disfigurement (I’ll leave it to the reader to decide if your ending is a happy one). E. M. Forster is no doubt completely behind your modern addition to the text.

So. Yeah. Buy it!

Xposted at Prism Comics

This was an early draft of a review I wrote of Android Karenina for Instinct Magazine:

I can say without reservation that I would rather have an anal fissure treated by a leper armed only with lemon juice and a nail gun than get involved in any literature from Russia, let alone Anna Karenina. Thank goodness Quirk Classics has taken out all the proletarian angst and replaced it with ROBOTS, which studies have shown to be 2 bajillion percent more interesting than the travails of bored upper-class housewives. In this alt.Russia, robots are inseparable companions and confidantes of the wealthy; faithful and obedient, save for Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin’s FACE implant, which threatens to destroy the peaceful monotony of everyone’s lives. Thankfully. The original novel makes the “Little House on the Prairie” series looks like a grindhouse bloodbath, so a touch of mayhem helps the boredom disappear like android exhaust in a stiff breeze. Guaranteed you will not throw yourself under a train by the end. Thank you, Quirk!

This was my final draft:

I would rather have a broken bone set by a dog armed only with a nail gun than read any piece of Russian literature, let alone Anna Karenina, the 19th century’s “Real Housewives…”, except instead of vapid whores who have everything, there is one bored betty who jumps in front of a train instead of divorcing her husband to be with her lover. Happily, Quirk Classics has taken out all the proletarian angst and replaced it with ROBOTS, which studies have shown to be 2 bajillion percent awesomer than bustles and adultery put together. Anna’s doomed affair with Count Vronsky takes a backseat to the treacherous plan by Russia’s cybernetic citizenry to usurp their fleshy creators and become Mechanical Overlords of the World! More Robotech than Tolstoy, and thank goodness for that!

They’re both WAY over my word limit (Sorry, Jeff!), but I’m curious to know which one has more “oomph!”. Thoughts? Comments? Opinions?

New X-Men #114
New Mutants #14

The Once and Future Master Mold. No wonder New X-Men #114 was re-issued this week.

“Second Coming” continues with Part 11 this week. It’s still mass destruction on all sides (though I seem to care less about which characters are dying than I did way back in “Mutant Massacre”), and all the B-list mutants (like Colossus) are taking the heavy knocks. Of all my impressions of this book, the strongest one I come away with is that I don’t like Doug very much. Actually, I don’t like any of the Muties very much. They’re all grouchy and smarmy and way too cocky for their own good. At least when they were teens, there was a reason for their cockiness (i.e., they were teenagers who thought they knew better than everyone around them); now it just reads as snark. And transparent snark at that. And what happens after “Second Coming” ends? What is the next genocidal plan Marvel will put into motion? I know that The X-Men will join “The Heroic Age” next month, but I probably won’t be along for the ride. “Mutant Massacre” was back in 1986, and it’s been one long assassination attempt since then. And “The Heroic Age” pits the X-Men against Dracula. Wow. Didn’t that happen back in 1983? Well, it will free up a few bucks every month to start my Bird of Prey, volume one collection. Speaking of which…

DC Legacies #2
Birds of Prey #2
Brightest Day #4

Apparently, “Brightest Day” is not going to be the solution to the endless deaths and editorial-driven disasters that I have assumed it to be. In an interview for the DCU Blog, Alex Segura has Geoff Johns as saying

“Brightest Day” is about second chances. I think it’s been obvious from day one that there are major plans for the heroes and villains from Aquaman to take center stage in the DC Universe, among many others, post-”Blackest Night”. “Brightest Day” is not a banner or a vague catch-all direction for the DC Universe, it is a story. Nor is “Brightest Day”a sign that the DC Universe is going to be all about ‘light and brighty’ superheroes. Some second chances work out…some don’t.

Yet, for being “just a story”, it’s leaking all across the DCU, even into the restart of Birds of Prey (granted Hawk and Dove are now part of the team), so it seems to be more of a paradigm than a story. After reading my DC titles this week, I’ve come to the conclusion that this could be a great opportunity to shake things up in DCU. Yeah, yeah, “again”, but everyone loves a crisis,right? Looking at DC Legacies, the heroes of the Silver Age disappeared rather than reveal who they were to the government and thereby lose their effectiveness to fight crime. But look at this week’s Birds of Prey: Oracle’s Braves know who the Penguin is, know his real name and know that he’s a bad guy. I’ve never really thought about it before, but, really, everyone in the DCU knows who the villains are. They don’t have secret identities per se, though they do have criminal personae and $$$ and guns and guards and compounds and Machines of Doom. Yet for some reason, they persist like untreated athlete’s foot even after year of head-butting with any number of heroes. But how much more fragile is a hero’s secret identity. The whole plot of BoP is the ruination that would follow revealing a hero’s alter ego. Witness what happened to Black Canary, and she’s apparently just the first. Does this make her more vulnerable (as we’ve always thought), or does this free her to be more of a hero? If “Brightest Day” is about second chances and not about being “light and brighty”, then maybe the way the heroes can get the upper-hand and not make porridge out of this second chance would be to adopt the villains’ “lifestyle” – live openly and without apology.

At least, that’s how I’m making sense of “Brightest Day”: that there really is a plan to drastically cut back on the snuff porn and get back to good stories. Of course, I thought that keeping New Krypton around for more than a minute was a good idea, too. Oh oh oh! and leaving Paradise Island intact.

Acts of Violence

I often say that Noir is dead though my saying so doesn’t stop people from trying to put the corpse on stage and make it dance. Noir was a time and a place that doesn’t exist anymore, and woe betide anyone who thinks its resurrection is imminent. This being said, it’s so much better just to write a 1920′s gangster story or a rural justice anecdote in one’s own voice the way that Martin Scorsese did in Gangs of New York or The Departed… well, maybe The Departed is a bad example of “better”. The team behind Acts of Violence took the better path, and in doing so put out a collection of four outstanding stories. I’m not one for gratuitous, over-the-top violence, but I am one for good stories, and the four tales here – “The Three Princes”, “Six O’clock Noose”, “Reggie-Town” and “The Orchard” – are excellent reads. I was especially intrigued by “Reggie-Town” with its deluded protagonist and the unexplained fate of the baby he kidnapped. Without histrionics nor finger-wagging, these stories stare at a black spot in the human psyche then take a picture.
Grade: A+

Batman/Superman Annual #4

Lex Luthor is one of those characters who can be admired for his ability for do impossibly heinous acts in the name of some twisted moral code and yet slip away form punishment like Louisiana shrimp from the hands of a shrimper… too soon? For this same reason he is also a source of frustration for me. Yeah, he’s Superman’s greatest enemy, but I’m rather tired of him (especially in the movies), so it’s nice to see that he will eventually (at some far-flung future time which should reach the newsstands in about 3130) get what’s coming to him. And while I at first thought he was a commercial ploy, I’ve grown to like Batman Beyond, and wouldn’t mind seeing him in an on-going series of his own, especially if Renato Guedes continues to draw him (his transitions are somewhat awkward, but his coloring and linework are peerless).
Grade: A-

Brightest Day #3

Wow. This is a total downer. And not all that bright at all. Seriously, Blackest Night had more hope than this. The story is intriguing and well-paced, but it’s not living up to its title. Yet. I’m standing by my man and saying that things will get better as the series goes on.
Grade: B

Wonder Woman #44

As cool as it might be to dream of being an Amazon, after this issue I am convinced it’s just a protracted death sentence being related to Diana. Last issue, Astarte revealed that she was Diana’s long-gone aunt, taken by The Citizenry and become mother of their greatest monster, Theana, Diana’s never-known cousin. By the end, Theana, by all rights an interesting and powerful character, is dead, and Astarte is Paradise Island-bound to be re-educated (which is the same fate Diana has planner for her, but with an upstanding moral twist to it, I’m sure). Another branch of the Amazon family tree is pruned for no really good reason other than to make Diana fightin’ mad and win the day. Yeah, it’s a long drink of hemlock being Diana’s kin.

But why? Why did Gail Simone end her excellent run on Wonder Woman with a rather macabre tale of mayhem and familicide, and then blunt the point of the tale with a happy ending that makes that of the first “Harry Potter” film seem maudlin? I’ll give her props for handing off the book to JMS in a package cleaner than that handed to her by Picoult, but there’s a difference between having a mess to clean up, and being handed a story that’s been cauterized. Which is not to say that this was a bad story; I’m just uncertain what its meaning is for future Diana stories. Usually, an author will take a moment to show what lurks around the corner or for terrible realization to dawn on a hero’s face, but here, Diana’s ignorance of what she’s just done is more worrisome than anything. I’m not saying there’s any deliberate malice on Diana’s part, but there were some troubling juxtapositions between her and Astarte’s behavior. And maybe Diana was supposed to come off looking better, more moral, than Astatre, but I’m not convinced she did. Here’s what I saw:

* Diana used the lasso to compel Zusen to betray her people. It was said in the previous issue that the members of The Citizenry were taken from various cultures and trained to forget their past lives. Having Diana subvert someone’s free will to do her bidding looked bad.
* The Reformation Island reference was a bit too close to the re-education proposed by Astatre.
* Diana took over a violent culture that has centuries of severe administration issues then let it go without supervision.
* She omitted telling her mother about her stolen sister. Yeah, Diana said she would te

ll her later, but it’s such a Catholic thing to do, putting off bad news until someone is happy enough to receive it without falling apart. It’s pretty co-dependent.
* She let Gail Simone kill her cousin (ok, that’s probably just Gail’s evil showing through ).

i dunno. could there be an evil Diana in the future, regardless of the “Brightest Day” mandate?
Grade: B

Madame Xanadu #23

“Broken House of Cards” finally ends, and while the end is just as subversive as most of Matt Wagner’s other endings (where instead of a full-pitched battle for world supremacy, protagonist and antagonist sort of slip away from each other to wage war another day; really, Wagner is the Anti-Millar), I found it to be a satisfying one. Of course, anyone who’s read Jack Kirby’s The Demon knows that Morgana comes back around 1973, but however frustrating that might be for Madame X, it’s also another story for another time.

Two things I would like to see happen with this book: one, that we linger in the early days of the DC Legends for another story or two. With DC entering the “Brightest Day” (which is still pretty dark, all things considered) and looking back on the early days of the DCU and its heroes, seeing Madame X move alongside more of them would be years worth of fascinating reading, especially under Wagner. Two, Madame X needs to grow in power. What kept her from being more powerful than Morgana who has basically been catatonic for centuries? Is it her moral restraint, as though the power to appropriately defend her ideals would end up eroding them, or is it some kind of… let’s call it “naivete” instead of “character flaw”. It’s fitting to be reviewing Wonder Woman this week while bringing up this issue. Diana has grown up in her comic from a wide-eyed princess to a warrior-philosopher. However, she’s done this in (relatively) little time. Madame X needs more depth without her having to go to the Dark Side and back again (“depth” does not have to mean “be laid waste to”), and I think then that we’ll see her grow in power and in character.

Grade: B+

Birds of Prey #1

Collectors are by nature an obsessive people. Nothing is so upsetting to us as missing pieces of a set. While I had been aware of Birds of Prey, I was so turned off by the TV show of the same name that the comic book didn’t seem like a “must get”. Then Gail Simone took over the writing duties for Wonder Woman, and I immediately loved her take on the Amazon Princess. I still had zero interest in BoP, but when I heard that it was starting over with Gail at the helm (sadly no longer on WW), I had to pick it up. I mean, I needed my monthly Gail fix. All I can say is, “Well. Crap. It looks like I need to get the full run of the original BoP series.” Damn you, Gail Simone, for loving your characters and making them so fun and appealing to read!
Grade: A

New Mutants #13

There not being even one mutie on the cover gave me pause. I know that with the “Second Coming” storyline taking over all things X, I shouldn’t have been surprised that Sam’s team took a backseat to Hope and Cable’s return (though Moonstar beating up the Messiah was an awesome tribute to the on-going struggle between polytheism and monotheism). I like and dislike that Marvel would declare martial law on the X books and commandeer their regular storylines. I like it because it means there are no core event books to buy with my regular reads being tie-ins. Instead, there’s a chapter book-like continuity to “Second Coming”. I dislike it because everyone is all jumbled up and I’m missing important information that core event books would probably provide.

Zeb Wells continues to grow as a writer and continues to grow on me. He hasn’t hit any remarkable strides yet, but I’m aboard. For now.
Grade: C+

Seige #4

Marvel is the Naproxen of event comics. Yeah yeah, they get the job done, and the result is almost indistinguishable from the real stuff, but ultimately there is something off-brand about their stories – a whiff of clone, a hint of prête à porter – that makes them seem tawdry in comparison to the Aleve of DC. Stan Lee rather cynically and shamelessly exposed the Silver Age trend of Marvel’s copying DC’s lead during a feature on the Justice League: New Frontier DVD (why he was doing an interview for a DC project is anyone’s guess), but why they still do this is beyond my imagination. Seige (along with “Necrosha” and Civil War and… some other event I have blocked out) is Marvel’s Darkest Night, though less aptly handled. Is it any surprise then that later this month they’ll be releasing their Brightest Day, The Heroic Age? (Though to be fair, I’m skipping The Return of Bruce Wayne because GMo’s Bruce-Wayne-as-Dawn-of-Time-eugenicist is already tripping me out.)

Beyond the ethics of the story, Seige ends, and ends well. Good. I’m uncertain how the combined forces of Marvel’s heroes can’t hurt The Void, but the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier can. And if the combined forces of Marvel’s heroes can’t hurt The Void, how is it Thor manages to drive The Void back and disintegrate Bob? I think it’s time to revisit the Marvel power scales flowchart. Oh! Ares gets a splatter porn death, but Loki just disappears? Not a power comment, just wondering why the bad taste couldn’t have continued all they way through to the end. In the end, there is a promise of renewal and hope which I do indeed hope Marvel follows through on. I’m kinda worn out with the body count and all.
Grade: C

In short, the action sequences are doled out like handfuls of rice in the Congo but without the accompanying satisfaction; however, the characters with the exception of Rhodey, are all hot. Don Cheadle is a bit too serious in his role, Chekovian levels of serious. He makes “The Three Sisters” look like vaudeville.

Look, anyone who wants to go see “Iron Man 2″ is going to go see it no matter what I say. Hell, I warned all my friends about “Clash of the Titans”, and yet some of them still went (and regretted it). I’m not saying “Don’t see it”. Definitely not! Go see it in an auditorium full of people because this is probably the Cotillion of summer films, the social event of the season. It’s all downhill from here. I’m just saying I didn’t like it as much as the first one, despite the snappy dialogue (reminiscent of Mandy Patinkin’s overlapping arguing with just about everyone during his stint on “Chicago Hope”) and the inclusion of the Black Widow. OH OH OH! andthe 40-by-his-face Mickey Rourke, who has the uncanny ability to do a consistent Russian accent. Yeah. Go see it.

Like its protagonist, “Kick-Ass” suffers from an identity crisis.

When Kick-Ass the comic was first released, I was impressed by how far the writer, Mark Millar, was willing to take his characters. However, as the story moved on, the body count grew higher and higher, and the scenes bloodier and bloodier to no good end except that Millar could do it that way. His property. His choices. No problem with that, except it didn’t make for good reading after an issue or two. However, sitting in a theatre watching an 11-year-old girl, supposedly living in the real world, pull off these amazingly choreographed kills was nothing but fun. And pretty much weightless. The concern I felt for all the heroes in Kick-Ass the comic, wasn’t present in Kick-Ass the movie at all. While I fretted over Dave’s choices and Hit Girl’s salty vocabulary and sociopathic upbringing in the reading, I never felt that there was any damage being done to their psyche’s in the film.

And this is the schizophrenia of Kick-Ass: it’s a terrible read with gem-like commentary and a featherweight movie that doesn’t even stand up to Titus Andronchus for character violence. Or for more modern watchers, it doesn’t even stand up to Die Hard 4 for general mayhem.

I will give Kick-Ass and Mark Millar this: I appreciate the wanton escalation and huge payoff at the end because there’s no expectation of continuance. Unlike most comic books which want to preserve a core cast of characters because the buying public identifies with them and wants to buy products in which they appear, and, therefore, must keep these characters alive ad infinitum, Kick-Ass has no upper limit that keeps characters “in play,” as it were, because the characters are not what drive the story, so they are expendable in the face of a rising action that has to keep rising. And I’m torn on liking this or not. On the plus side, it hurries the story along and stakes seems that much more risky. This was a lesson that Jericho learned after being canceled less than a season into the story. I tried to watch when it was on, but after four or so episodes of the town facing one more post-apocalyptic crisis yet settling down to a cold brewski at the end, I gave up. I never felt like these characters were at risk because they weren’t. Keeping a story going for as long as possible, usually past the point of usefulness or interest, is the TV way of telling a story. However, after “Jericho” was canceled, the writers took the story into some radical and life-threatening directions (I caught a clip here and there). Too bad they didn’t do so earlier. I hope that “V” learns the same lesson. Soon. (Related kvetch: the pacing on that show is glacial. And a resistance movement of four people?!? Riiiight.) On the con side, it hurries the story along and characters are sacrificed along the way. Aaron Johnson as Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass was apt: kinda bland and not much of an emotional range, but there wasn’t a lot of call for emotion in “Kick-Ass”. Alone, Johnson couldn’t carry the movie, but he luckily had Chloe Moretz (Hit Girl) to do all the heavy lifting. More than anyone else, she had a story that was worth telling. and Nic Cage… good Lord. He’s almost like Shelly Winters, the butt of his own joke. More than once, I thought he was Nic Cage playing a man who was mocking Nic Cage.

And for comic that was so audacious, I was shocked that Millar signed off on (I assume he signed off on) a Hollywood ending: boy gets girl, boy lays girl, boy uses personal bazooka to dispatch antagonist and usher in the dénouement (not as cool as it sounds). The ending to Kick-Ass the comic was much more coherent, or at least much more in line with the rest of the story. The movie’s seams show so badly that I again found myself wondering if there was an element of parody involved.

While the movie didn’t live up to Mark Millar’s own hype, it’s an adventure worth catching. If it were 3D, I’d tell you to see it now, but it’s 2D, so wait till it’s on DVD.

I did not have a very productive morning in terms of getting my grades done before noon like I normally do. I was a bit distracted by… a pressing matter that will come to a head tomorrow. So, at noon, I packed up my laptop and student essays, hid them, and made my way to see How to Train Your Dragon, which I’d wanted to see for a while. So worth the interruption to my day. If you haven’t seen it, get to your local theatre before it’s gone.

That being said, don’t read any further if you haven’t seen the film. Spoilers ahead.

“You’re not my son.”

Hiccup, the protagonist, is the skinniest of all the Viking in his village (except for Astrid, so you know they’re going to get together by the end) and the least physically able to participate in his tribe’s all-consuming pastime: dragon slaying (further evidence Hiccup will get together with Astrid by the end because, as Paula Abdul knows, opposites attract). Even though he has a million inventions to do the heavy lifting involved in dragon slaying, his father, the village chief, isn’t interested in progress. He’d rather rely on old-fashioned ways of dispatching the winged terrors. During a dragon raid, Hiccup traps a never seen, but rumored to be the worst dragon of all, a Night Fury. However, no one believes him when he announces his triumph. Hiccup sneaks away from the village and finds the Night Fury, whom he befriends over time and names Toothless. I’m going to have to admit that there were parts of this movie that made me tear up a bit. Maybe it’s the fact that I was really caffeinated at the time which always makes me emotional. Maybe it’s the fact that I have several pets, little souls in my care, whom I love more than I’ve loved most of my exes (not in an Erick Rivera kind of way, but in an appropriate human/animal kind of way). Maybe it’s because I have daddy issues out the wazoo (I can barely sit through The Lion King). Pick your trauma, but I found the plot of How to Train Your Dragon to be one with more depth and interest than most movies I’ve seen of late (including the last-in-a-line-of-godforsaken-French-films-that-unfathomably-win-awards opus, A Prophet).

“You just gestured to all of me!”

There’s something about a running gag that I love, and HtTYD is full of them, mostly directed at Hiccup. I want to call this “The Muppet Movie Syndrome”. Thankfully, the jokes never have the chance to grow predictable, and by the end, they’ve evolved into expressions of affection, again, directed at Hiccup. There’s also one transgressively bawdy joke at the expense of Hiccup’s dead mother. Stoick gives Hiccup his first gift: a horned helmet made from Mom’s breastplate. He explains, pointing to his own, that they’re a matched set; they keep her close. Hiccup tries to be appreciative, but, ya know, “Ew!”

The language is a little bit “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and a little bit “Glee”. Nothing wrong with that since that’s the demographic the movie points itself at (I was there! What more proof do you need?), and I didn’t even notice. At all. I hope this doesn’t mean I’m losing my linguistic edge.

“Well, most of him.”

I didn’t see the crippling at the end coming, though given all the other motifs, I should have. Still, I gasped when Hiccup got out of bed for the first time since being wounded fighting the Tyranodragon and his metal prosthetic touched the ground. It grounded the movie. Without it, the movie would have been good, but this irreversible maiming of a character made it, dare I say, profound.

“The food is tough and tasteless; the people even more so.”

I’m glad that How the Train Your Dragon was as fun as it was. Dreamworks is sometimes hit or miss with its animated features. Madagascar and Shrek had great early movies, but the shine dimmed quickly with all the sequels. Monsters vs. Aliens never got off the ground due to its glacial pacing and comic mistiming. However, Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Kung-Fu Panda and Chicken Run were all well done full stop.

One thing I found odd was the darkness of the 3D. At the end of the movie when I took my glasses ff, I couldn’t believe how much color had been filtered through the dark lenses. It obviously didn’t interfere with my enjoying the movie, and I obviously wasn’t even aware of it, but now I’m going to peek over my glasses during every 3D movie I go to to see if I’m missing something.

“That’s for everything else.”

When all is said and done, dragons will probably make a comeback at Christmas this year. I know I left the theatre wanting a dragon, but I had to settle for zipping through Friday afternoon traffic at speeds in excess of 15 MPH over the posted limit (I know: “Do you dare?”). I shouldn’t say that. My friends already think I’m a hazard on the road. Still, would I be less of a hazard riding a dragon? Well, maybe for airplanes.

Hie now!

Brightest Day #0

Geoff Johns needs to be cloned so he can write every current mainstream DC book, with maybe the exceptions of Wonder Woman and Batman and Robin and the upcoming return of Birds of Prey. His Blackest Night was the one event in years that was 1.) readable, and 2.) important. As one of DC’s new creative admins, he’s in the perfect position to make sure that his work isn’t changed at the whim of some editor **cough*dandidio*cough** because there’s more money to be had by putting out a new, contradictory event. With Brightest Day, Johns (with Peter Tomasi) brings continuity to his vision for the DCU by exploring the aftermath of the defeat of Nekron and the resurrection of several characters. There’s no story to report on so far, just tantalizing hints of what’s to come as seen by White Lantern Boston Brand, the hero formerly known as Deadman. Great stuff for the man I intend to father my children. Seriously, I’d grow a uterus for him. A+

Kill Shakespeare #1

I’m not a fanatical Shakespeare purist. You know, the kind who doesn’t have a sense of humor about adaptations or who can’t seen the plays done in alternative form (like “Ten Things I Hate about You” or “O” or “Forbidden Planet”). I am, however, one of those people who is going to give a salty opinion when some theatre group manages to mangle the text into something unrecognizable on stage. Which brings me to Kill Shakespeare. The stumbling blocks I had with this comic were exactly the elements that are crucial to a good comic book: the art, the language, and value of the story. Of course, the art sets the tone for the story because it’s the first apparent element when browsing a comic book title. Had Kagen McLeod, the cover artist for the edition I bought, done the entire story rather than Andy Belanger, I would have been more interested in the story. Belanger’s Mignola-like style pulls away from the story instead of supporting it. As far as the language goes, I wasn’t expecting iambic-pentameter (the only people who actually spoke in iambic-pentameter were pirates because in attempting to look educated, they were too dumb not to know that regular people didn’t speak that way), but I also wasn’t expecting contemporary language patterns. Lord knows there are enough 16th century resources and texts (or even amateur scholars) out there for people to emulate. And finally, Richard III is manipulating Hamlet into killing Shakespeare, and given the title, it seems a done deal that he’ll try to do so. Why show us your hand like that? It certainly doesn’t leave much in terms of plot twists or surprising moments. Then again, Rosencrantz here is shown to be a faithful friend to Hamlet and not Claudius’ crony, so who knows how Shakespeare himself will be characterized. Ultimately, there’s not enough here for me to consider buying issue #2. D

I saw Clash of the Titans tonight. For those who don’t have time to read a whole review, I’ll summarize for you: “Don’t bother.” But if you have a few minutes, let me tell you why.

The Tyranny of Slavish Devotion vs. Just Call it the Fuck Something Else

No one loves deconstructed stories more than I do. Being able to take a familiar story and inject it with new and surprising elements is a skill that few people have, but more people should practice. Greek myths are, what, closing in on being two thousand five hundred years old now? Can we count how many times the stories have been told, re-told, embellished and spun? Doubtful. To tell the story of Perseus as one might find it in Edith Hamilton’s Mythology to a modern movie audience would invite sudden critical box-office death, which no one in the studio wants. Even to re-shoot the 1981 Clash of the Titans might cause audiences to wonder why a script with more 21st century sensibilities wasn’t used. In and of themselves, there is nothing wrong with these approaches to updating movies (whether one should update movies in the first place is another issue altogether), but every once in a while, something like 1995’s The Scarlet Letter rises from the brew.

Clash of the Titans is 2010’s The Scarlet Letter.

Again, one does not have to be tied down to the source material – Lord knows the original CotT wasn’t – but why mess with the relationships between the characters? Hades is out to rule Olympus? Danae is not Acrisius’ daughter, visited by Zeus in the form of a golden shower (ahem…), but his wife, visited by Zeus in Acrisius’ form a la Uther meets Igraine? Djinn? Perseus loves Io? Wasn’t she a cow? Should someone tell Perseus or will he discover her udders for herself (speaking of which, what an odd costume choice that was for Cassiopeia)? If that much re-arranging is going to be done, why even bother with the CotT name-recognition? Make up some mythical land with its own pantheon and released it under a different title altogether. Maybe Dungeon Siege is in need of a sequel.

“Getting to Know Nothing about You”

How is it possible that in the scope of a two-hour movie, almost nothing exciting happened? Wait. Let me qualify that: there was lots of destruction and things exploded and monsters were around every corner. But I could have cared less. I didn’t have the slightest interest in the problems of these characters because I didn’t know who they were. Thinking back, I can’t recall most of the names of the characters who I watched for most of the film. Frankly, I’m not even sure their names were said. I searched vainly on IMDB for a picture of the youngest member of Perseus’ party, first, cuz “woof!”, and second, because that was the only was I could hope to locate him: by his looks. I don’t have the slightest clue what his name was, though I’m guessing it ends with “-us”. Not that it matters because every character died in the Underworld anyway. Talk about Princess Parking.

The Schizophrenia of God

To look around these days, religion is getting kicked in the nads. Hard. Mostly through the fault of church leaders who, from all available reports, are in it for either a.) the tax-free donations, b.) the love of power, or c.) child-raping with impunity. The situation is exacerbated by the screaming devoted who on one had are a little too quick and a little to proud to make sure everyone knows they’re Christian, yet on the other are some of the biggest assholes around. Jesus loves you, but God will punish you. Do as I say, not as I do. Obama is a dark-skinned socialist, not at all like who Jesus was. God obviously needs a better PR machine than the one he has now because one doesn’t have to look any further than them to see why His stock is swirling the drain.

The Olympians are much like that. Zeus wants the love of the humans he created, but isn’t above terrorizing them to get it. He has a bastard son whom he’s willing to sacrifice because he’s not showing Dad any love, but then goes out of his way to help this son whose goal is to topple Olympus, yet somehow doesn’t see that or doesn’t care. Because family is just that important. All of which makes it easy to believe than an entire country has gone anti-god, and that a rabid pro-god cult has sprung up to fill the vacuum. Maybe it’s me and how I view religion, but the underlying message of “religion bad” was more pointed than an honor student’s pencil collection the morning of the SAT.

I’m torn between to possibilities: this was just part-in-parcel with the rest of the sloppy writing and editing in the film, or this was an on-the-nose condemnation of organized religion. I lean towards the latter because I’m a devoted anti-theist: I believe in a God of one nature or another, and I believe God’s true believers need to go find their own planet to live on. My proof, if one can call it that, is V for Vendetta. As soon as it was (relatively) safe to release an on-the-nose metaphor for the Bush Administration, they did. Better late than never, I suppose. Is CotT taking aim at the religious bedlam that has placed itself on the largest, yet most beleaguered (they say) soapbox in the public forum? No doubt Bill Donohue would be all over this cinematic lion, sending out poison e-missives to whomever still listens to him if he weren’t so busy making excuses for all the child-raping.

“Bitch” is the New Black

There is exactly one adult word in Clash of the Titans: “bitch”, as in speaking of Medusa, “Now let’s go kill this bitch!” After Perseus said this, I had a moment of déjà bolus. I had choked on this word before. Then I remembered from where: X3 with its now iconic “I’m the Juggernaut, BITCH!”

It was just as distasteful now as it was then.

Moments. Mere Moments.

Despite what I’ve said, not everything was terrible. Of course, there were Sam Worthington’s calves (sadly, he never took off his shirt. Not. Once. What the hell kind of sword-and-sandals movie is this?), but there was also a glimmer of a larger story. When Perseus and company arrived at the lair of the Stygian Witches, Io explained the ruins were the site of the battle between the Kraken and the Titans. Just like that, I wondered where the temples and personalities and nymphs and fauns and gods were. The one thing missing from this movie about Greek mythology was the mythology.

Another treat was the Bubo-shaped Easter egg that was in the movie for 15 seconds, though sadly as the butt of a derisive joke. It was cool to see him, but like the rest of the movie, this scene mocked its better.

“Re-make” ≠ “Better”

I saw Clash of the Titans at the Alamo Drafthouse South, where they showed classic “Dynarama” trailers spotlighting Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion effects work on The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, and Jason and the Argonauts, and the original Clash of the Titans. Even with the clunky monsters and their sometimes awkward interactions with real people, I just added the gift set to my Amazon.com wish list (hint hint). I can say with no uncertainty that will not happen with 2010’s CotT.

The And

Of course, this is just me. I’m a firm believer in “Go and see”. Once you do, let me know and we’ll talk. I’m eager to hear what others think. A final dire thought: as everything else goes these days, is it impossible that a sequel is in the works already?

Uncanny X-Men #522 - No one could have been more supportive of the return of Miss Pryde than me, but the overall story to get her back home ASAP seems rushed. I don’t doubt that in the Marvel U, Magneto can reach across the vastness of space, turn a moon-sized bullet around and draw it to Earth at near the speed of light. But I’m calling shenanigans on the “he disintegrated the bullet as it entered the atmosphere thereby not destroying the world.” That’s just too much to take in in a single issue. And why the hurry to get her back, anyway? The story could have been drawn out for a few months and had a way better plot, but it seems she had to be back now. What is Marvel planning for Shadowcat?

Of course, there is a twist to Kitty’s return: she’s stuck in her phasing state. I suppose that the X-Men could ask Reed Richards to unstuck her like he did in The X-Men vs. The Fanstastic Four back in.. what, 1987? C

Nemesis #1 - I am going to hold off on doing a review of Nemesis, except to say that I got it, and it does indeed, make Kick-Ass pale in comparison. Good or bad? You decide.

The HULK! #23

I didn’t buy Crossed this week like I had planned because my LCS didn’t have back issues extending to #1. Being a completist, I would have been driven mad by half a set. HOWEVER, there was a copy of the infamous The HULK #23 in which Bruce Banner is almost shower-raped at a Y by two sour-faced gay guys. As noted in Mistakes of a Past History #2, writer Jim Shooter was apparently going for “verisimilitude” with this story, but the result is a menudo of melodrama, a veritable potpourri of painful plights so grotesquely portrayed that I can’t believe it got green lit in the first place. Of course, I was interested in buying the issue because of the gay angle (it being of personal interest), but trust me, gay people were not the only one’s maligned by Jim Shooter. Junkies in particular should be taking some umbrage with him, to say nothing of baby mommas. “Verisimilitude” to Jim Shooter apparently means, “everyone dies unmourned: the good, the bad, the innocent” or something equally as nihilistic… well, in a Sartre-for-Dummies-I-read-about-this-once-while-waiting-on-line-at-the-grocery-store kind of way. Shooter didn’t have the chops to write this effectively, and that’s the real crime.

No reviews this week, but I found something truly wonderful at Austin Books and Comics: Dynamite #4 with the dreamy Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson on the cover! Squeeeeeal! On a less gay note, Dynamite was one of those magazine’s for kids that we got through Scholastic Book Services in school. It was a step above Highlights for Children in terms of content and reading level, but less erudite than CBS’s “In the News”. The cool thing about this find is that it still has the subscription form and club patch inside. And, yeah, the Hardy Boys.

Green Lantern #51

There’s a reason that Geoff Johns was just promoted to the post of DC’ Chief Creative Officer, and it’s in this issue. I don’t normally read any of the GL titles, but Johns’ “Blackest night” has me buying all his supplementary stories. The guy is carrying on a serious love affair with all things DC, and his affection is contagious. Under his direction, I can see the DCU becoming a much more interesting place.
Grade: A

Uncanny X-Men #521

If it weren’t for the last page of this issue, I would consider dropping the title altogether. The X-Men just created a nation for themselves, and instead of getting into the meat and potatoes of setting up a government, mutant political factions, “savior complexes”, and host of other issues that are pretty relevant to current topics, Matt Faction serves up a very tepid Legacy Flu. It’s sort of like having Hamburger Helper every Friday night: it’s safe and traditional, but no one is every going to moan in delight with each meaty, saucy spoonful.
Grade: C-

Siege #2

I haven’t been an “event” person in years (even though I have every issue of the much-maligned “Final Crisis”) mostly because I find them to be more con than content. While hyped to be huge and meaningful, events aren’t usually that impacting, and, worse, they’re horribly written and poorly plotted.

Having said that, I loved Siege #2!

While the content is on the light side (the majority of the issue focuses on Ares and his ill-fated battle with Sentry), the more mundane scenes – particularly between Nick Fury and Alex, the Avengers in the S.H.I.E.L.D. transport, and the last page of the issue – are well-written and give more weight to the story than “superpower-on-superpower action” and “the Saint Crispin’s Day speech”. But, I’m a moments guy.

Coipel, Morales and Martin are a cyclonic artistic force. While Bendis’ words may have been handled well enough by another team, this one breathes life into each panel with its dynamic compositions and expressive faces. Even the capes are expressive and full of movement. The best example of this is page three – Ares’ realization that he’s been manipulated into attacking Asgard juxtaposed with the battle below is brilliant. Without words, without mummery, the reader knows exactly what is going on under the god’s helmet. Great stuff! However, the rending of Ares on a later page, while arranged beautifully, is odd in that his intestines seem to have been previously resting on his back, protecting his spine. Gory, yes, but inaccurate overkill at best.

My one complaint is the half-truth of the “death of an Avenger” solicit. It was sophomoric hype at best. You can do better, Marvel.
Grade: A-

Kick Ass #8

The final issue of Kick Ass is just about what everyone expected it to be: loud, hyper-violent, and calculated to offend as many people as possible with… well, pick your issue. It’s bound to be there. and I say “calculated” in the most cynical way possible. Even going back to the solicit, which asks “Who will be morally outraged?” (when there’s not a single character in the book that knows what morality looks like let alone if outrage is an option), it’s obvious this finale was designed to provoke a reaction from the audience. Mark Millar went where “Heroes” couldn’t/wouldn’t/was unable to go with the “superheroes in real life” theme, and how messed up it really would be. Overall, however, Kick Ass is like watching porn: lots of button-mashing and screaming and penetrations climaxing with everyone screaming as the money shot splooshes out, covering everything. It is a comic fanboy’s wet-dream brought to the page. I have to applaud Millar for doing what no one has really done before: delving into angsty-teen-comic-fan-fic comic stories and making at living at it (then again there is the inexplicable popularity of “Twilight” and “Wicked Lovely”). If “nuance” is what you’re looking for, well, that’s why there are movies like “When in Rome” (I jest, of course. “When in Rome” is as subtle as a skinhead at a Seder.). I just help but wonder that I read this series the whole way through. Maybe because it betokens the future of comics writing.
Grade: C

Madame Xanadu #19

Madame Xanadu is one book I look forward to every month. Oddly, this month’s issue was supposed to be the conclusion of a story, but instead there was an overwrought “aside” about Nimue and Morgana’s childhood together (an extremely long childhood, at that). I know that Matt Wagner is often overwrought, but usually that can be forgiven because of the art that accompanies the story. This is one of those titles where the art means so much to the words. Amy Reed Hadley, who normally illustrates, is off this month, replaced by Joelle Jones, and the story is just kind of “OK”. Amy brings some real magic to Matt Wagner’s words, and without her, this chapter seems both unnecessary and ugly.
Grade: C+

Green Lantern Corps #44

Normally, i hate deus ex machina because it’s a cheap escape from a dramatic problem: the universe steps in and says, “No more. It’s done.” which leaves characters (and viewers) unsatisfied because it shows that we’re at the mercy of powers greater than ourselves, and free will is a slogan like “life should be fair.” That being said, I LOVED GLC’s method of disposing of the Black Lanterns: Mogo. It seems fair in some way, especially because Xanshi in its entirety came back, to say nothing of the rest of the universe’s re-animated dead. God doesn’t come down and declare that “Enough is enough. Go home.” No, no. God comes down with some righteous smiting, and it looks great ion a page. Is there a counterpoint to deux ex machina? If so, that’s what Peter Tomasi has created in this issue.
Grade: A

Uncanny X-Men #520

When sitting down to write this review, I had to pick the issue back up again because I had no recollection of what had happened. Then I saw the cover and remembered that Wolverine and Psylocke were out and about looking for someone for some reason. Then it occurred to me that I had liked Magneto because he was being misunderstood (Scott, of course, was a controlling bitch to him) and noble (poor guy couldn’t catch a break even when being helpful). In general, the issue was half-forgettable and half-sorta interesting.
Grade: C-

The Power of SHAZAM! #48

I’m sure the undead have their own particular stench, but in this case, it smells like… poo? Jeez, someone light a match for this Blackest Night stinker! First of all, this one-shot is even more proof that no one knows how to write the Marvel Family well. Except for their abbreviated stint in JSA last year, there’s really nothing marvelous about them of late. Second of all, I’m uncertain if this a “triumph of the human spirit” story or a “here’s another clue as to how Nekron will be defeated” story. If it’s the former, why is Osiris of all people able to resist the Black Rings? “Black Adam’s magic” is a throwaway explanation since lots of magical beings have not resisted un-life in the main BN title. If it’s the latter, well, it’s a clue no one in the DCU is going to have access to.

The Marvel Families have so many stories that still need to be told, and with just one issue to do one story, they (and we) were we given this. Osiris himself says that “we were all just family,” and that would have made an excellent theme for an excellent story, but, unfortunately, we got jack shit.

The folks over at CPB are taking a week off to get ourselves ready to advance from beta to… is it “alpha”? “The Omega Opening” (and doesn’t that sound tawdry?)? I have no idea. What happens after “beta”? Whatever it’s called, we’re heading there and I get to come back here to Orthocomics, do my reviews, and figure out what’s to become of the blog while CPB takes off.

Batman and Robin #3: Like a steak and potato dinner, this was satisfying. Very satisfying. Like, eating said steak and potato dinner, sleeping for a few days to wake up and discover you’ve lost 7 pounds not from a wasting disease satisfying. Leave it to GMo to come up with an airborne addiction and sound effects like “HAUUU NAUUUUU!” Frightening. A-

Batman: Widening Gyre #1: If I’m going to point Fingers of Blame ™ at anyone for this… let’s call it “a second chance gone awry”, it’ll be Mike Marts and Dan Didio for failing to do their jobs as editors. I know that Kevin Smith is pretty famous for his spaghetti-and-aspic-on-the-wall-let’s-see-what-sticks-and-gels approach to writing; I also know that mileage varies from work to work (compare Dogma to Chasing Amy). Yet for some reason, Marts and Didio seem to have not known this, or at least didn’t let it bother them in the editing process. I’ll admit that I bought this issue for the cover art (levels and levels above the interior art) and the title (“Widening Gyre”, how cool of a title is that?), so anything beyond this should be gravy, right? Sure, but lumpy, orange-flavored beef gravy? Maybe not so much. The mish-mash of multiple guest stars, incongruent backstories, and out-of-character speeches (Batman: “Sonnuva.. the kid pulled a ME.”; Etrigan: “No way…”) and nonchalant conflict resolution read more as “we need to fill pages” than “we’re telling a complex story”. D

Detective Comics #856: I still can’t put into exact words why I like this series as much as I do. The story has the hallucinogenic effect of Alice in Wonderland, a dream populated by bleary-eyed sleepers and hunters. I do know that I have to pick up the Crime Bible: Five Lessons in Blood to get a better handle on what this Religion of Crime is all about. B+

Madame Xanadu #14: There’s wisdom that says “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!” but I’ve been expecting it to turn its attention to Madame X and her lady-love Marisol for some time now. I applaud these women for being bold enough to stay in Spain while, ya know, people are being killed to the left and right around them for offenses far less serious than acting out scenes from “Hot Babes in Loose Skirts.” However, not arming themselves or being more cautious or living somewhere deeper in the woods was just utter foolishness on their parts. Seriously, when the Christianists have their way with America and I become illegal for just being, I’m going to be fortified enough to take at least a dozen with me when they show up at my door. Yeah, “and your little god too!” Having said that, I like this issue, except for Kaluta’s strange rendition of the female form on the cover. I make fun of Greg Land for his impossible breasts and ineptitude in connecting head bones to neck bones and on down the line, but Kaluta has surpassed the master with his frightening Holocaust Special Madame X. B

Wonder Woman #36: I think Diana takes on too much responsibility that isn’t hers. Yeah, yeah, she’s got the whole wide world on her shoulders and has had for some time now, but taking Pele’s accusations of being complicit in Zeus’ murder of Zane, and “set[ting her] father alone against the wrath of [her] entire pantheon” is supporting an unduly free interpretation of the events. I’m sure she’s feels guilty about Zane’s death and all, but making a pledge to Pele when she’s just crawled out from under her Amazonian vows seems like she’s not thinking clearly at all. And awwh poor Tom! How is Diana going to explain her “I never loved you” away? I’m sensing a new direction for Diana, but it seems like Gail Simone is also only sensing it. B

New Mutants #4: Ah well, that was a disappointing read. Yeah, my girl Illyana got some scary one-liners off, but all in all, I think I’ve read this story before; ya know, “Legion screws everything up before the Muties pull it together.” I’m not digging the trophic characterizations (especially, God help us, with the dialogue) when by this time the Muties should be more individuated.

Dark Avengers #8: Angt! More angst! Less fighting for the sake of fighting and more angst! Jeez, what happened to the promise of the first issue? C

It was a very sparse week for comics; I got the first issue of the new Doom Patrol series (ugh), and didn’t give Buffy the Vampire Slayer more than a glance as I thought, “I’ve been burned by you before!” Click in the report card below to see my (and others’) reviews this this week’s comics:

Fly on over to ComicsPlusBlog for this week’s comic reviews. I look at the finally final issue of Legion of Three Worlds (SPOILER: It was a satisfying ending to a great story).

For fear of cross-posting, all of my reviews will now be a part of Comics Plus Blog‘s weekly feature “The Pull Report”. Which I edit. I know: “one more thing to do every week?!” The site is still in beta, but swing by to see what I and a whole annoyance of reviewers think about this week’s comics. Click on the graphic to get there:

Uncanny X-Men #513: Oh, Scott. Did you not see this coming? I mean, did anyone not see this coming from the moment that Scott and Emma started banging psychic uglies? I’m just surprised that it took this long for Emma to take over the X-Men and reform them in her image. However, as stupid as this makes all the X-Men look (except Jean, but she’s dead), it’s GREAT drama. However, it will not be great drama if Matt Fraction does something silly like make Emma a double agent so she can be seamlessly reunited with the X-team. I want Emma back on the outs and being fabulously evil, the idiom in which she excels. Emma out; Cloak and Dagger in! A

Batman and Robin #2: So far, so good. GMo hasn’t gone looney tunes and taken Batman back to… well, R.I.P., though he’s very good at channeling his eccentricities into the undisciplined and dangerous Damien. In this issue we see what makes Dick not Batman – all those years of not wanting to be like him finally paid off, and Dick, while a great fighter, doesn’t command the respect and awe of those around him, especially Robin. Yes, this is the “kinder, gentler” Batman, and I hope Dick quickly figures out that is just not who he has to be. I think GMo is exactly the right writer to break Dick down and maybe build him back up. We know how he likes his heroes damaged. Bye, Dick. It was nice knowing ya. A

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight #26: Done. D-

Unthinkable #1 and 2: After reading this and Mark Sable’s ridiculous line about “I feel my privacy is a small price to pay for educating the government about the medium.” I had to pick up Unthinkable. I don’t think I got it for the content necessarily, but to see if indeed what he wrote was worth his pussy statement of relinquishing his privacy to a government that thinks five-year olds are terrorists and nipple rings can be removed at will. I’m glad that his comics mean more to him than his privacy, but, really, fuck him. I can’t even imagine what he thought he taught them about the comics medium: that a page layout doesn’t have to convey chronological action? That characters’ speech and facial expressions don’t have to line up? That people can walk willy-nilly onto military bases and bully commanding offivcers into handing over equipment and weapons? Frankly, Sable needs to be taught more about the medium before he can teach TSA anything. D

The Tick and Arthur: The Complete Works TPB: Still fresh after all this time. Non-derivative. Quirky. Uncanny comic timing. Gentle mocking. Ninjas. This is the gold standard of indy comics. SPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!!!! A+

Detective Comics #854: Finally Batwoman! I have to admit I was a little nervous to get this comic at first because it’s written by Greg Rucka. 52 Greg Rucka (though to be fair, he wasn’t alone in that mess. Still, once bitten, twice shy.). Rucka’s story is lyrical, almost a song or part of an opera. If the art were in anyone else’s hands besides J. H. Harrison’s, the book would totally fall apart like a cheap red wig. For now, I’m hooked. A

Wonder Woman #33: I’m running dangerously close to giving Gail Simone Rachel Ray Face, so all I’m going to say is that this was another excellent read except the end was a bit to abrupt for me. One more issue to resolve the Genocide threat (or at least make its whereabouts more clear) and to really let Zeus and Ares’ plans unfold into a HUGE (well, HUGE-er) mess! Ah, well. B

Madame Xanadu #12: Matt and Michael’s Exodus Noir reminds me of the old Sandman Mystery Theatre – sort of dark, sort of sketchy, sort of fun, but always heading towards a horrible end for the titular character. Oooh, foreshadowing. A

Thor #602: Gods are strange creatures of inertia and folly, like really big rocks rolling down a hill. Or across the bottom of a river. I’ve yet to see any compelling evidence that they think anything through before they go off half-cocked and do it (yeah, I’m looking at you, too, Genesis!). Even the “good” ones let their goodness get in the way of accomplishing anything truly “good”. For example, moving all the Asgardians to Latveria – totally poorly planned. Keeping Loki around when no one trusts him/her – well, that just defies wisdom. Weird that the one mortal in the company of the gods is the only one who wants to actively squelch evil. A

Uncanny X-Men #512: My so far least favorite aspect of the team – The X-Club – heads back to the turn of the 20th century to find the parental DNA of the original Mutant X, and as it turns out, I didn’t want to burn pictures of Matt Fraction at midnight. If I had one complaint, it would be the “Hey, things in the past are just like they are in the present!” parallelism. One would think that someone would have known about an earlier Shaw who ran the Hellfire Club 100 years ago, but such is the spurious logic of comic book and time travel. In Fraction’s defense, even Joss Whedon screwed it up in Runaways. B+

Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men Utopia: About two months ago, Ben and I went to go see X-Men Origins: Wolverine, not because we had to but because we needed a mental vacation after a particularly stressful week. We were holding hands, waiting for hte movie to begin when six guys filed into the row behind us, sat on my far left and started speaking in Spanish about “the fucking fags over there.” Myself being half-deaf didn’t hear a word of it, but Ben did, and he was extremely uncomfortable. He wanted to move. I didn’t. And, long story short, I got my way. When the movie started these guys shut up, watched the film and left moments after the credits started rolling. Reading Utopia was kind of like that experience. For no really good reason, bigots feel it’s their right (or, Heaven help us, their god-given duty) to expunge “the Other”, demonize them, make them unwelcome. There are also assdancers like Norman Osborne who feel that they deserve to rule and have no compunction against throwing up (natural) “law and order” to get their way. I find this lack of Justice unsettling, which in turn makes me angry. Then I think about those guys at the movie theatre and wonder if they realized they were cheering for “the Other” to win, and if they know that they are seen as “the Other” just as Ben and I. Probably not. More’s the pity. And to Matt Fraction: the descriptive caption boxes are past their prime. A

Barack the Barbarian #1: Terribly unsubtle, but was a fun read. Lord knows that satire doesn’t have to be an épée, but more often than not, it’s a blunt and forceful cudgel. I have my own parody of Marriage Equality coming out soon, and it’s also terribly unsubtle (i.e., doesn’t follow the rule that the best parody is transparent), but in my own mind it could have been better. Next time. B-

Had the above poster been the official one for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I would have applauded it for its refreshing honesty, not only for the movie itself but for the state of high-action summer blockbusters dating back to Independence Day (yes, I know that wasn’t the original summer blockbuster, but it was about the time if ID4′s release that the “bigger, badder, louder” idiom took root). However, I would also say that the poster’s tag tag line – “More ALIEN ROBOTS, bigger EXPLOSIONS, and much much more MEGAN FOX” – unironically states exactly what’s wrong with the movie. But you don’t have to believe me. Here. This is the movie summary from where I found the poster (my suggestion is to NOT click on the link because it’s one of “those sites” that give off a bad vibe, like perezhilton.com or boysfrombrazil.com. I include the link only for citation purposes.), which I found to be just about as clear as the movie itself:

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This may be the most accurate portrayal of what it was like to watch ROTF I’ve come across. Yeah, yeah, Roger Ebert was pretty clever with his “choir of hell” analogy, but he didn’t really capture the sense of what it was like to be sitting in the theatre watching the mess that was ROTF unzip and shake its privates at us. Metaphorically speaking. Except when I’m speaking literally.

There’s nothing like standing next to a child to really throw a situation into sharp relief. Things that adults don’t think twice about – the little slights of daily life – suddenly become large and vulgar displays of callousness when a kid is in the picture. So, thinking “ROTF is only PG-13; there may be a few things we need to explain, but surely we (my brother and I) can take Dominic (my five-year old nephew) to see it.” Dominic loves Transformers, and this was my special treat to him before I left PA to go back to Texas. A “treat” for which I will feel forever guilty because of how MISLEADING the PG-13 rating is. I was genuinely humiliated to be there, thinking about how we were going to have to have a Talk with Dominic after the credits rolled. Frankly, if it weren’t for the fact that we suspected Dominic didn’t “get” some of the
things that happened and was there to see his favorite bots “live”, I would have walked out as early as Megan Fox’s first appearance: a completely unnecessary 20-second shot of her dry-humping a motorcycle.

Not that there is anything wrong with sex. Given a choice between sex and violence in movies, I’ll go with sex every time over violence. HOWEVER, the sex in ROTF was there to be sex in ROTF and served no other purpose than to be there on the screen, pandering to fanbois (as in “I’ve never known the touch of a woman and therefore have no idea what real skin should look like”) and those who like it gross (multiple shots of humping dogs, John Turturro’s fleshy ass, a bot humping Megan Fox). Lord knows I think that the ass-shot in Orgazmo was hilarious, so I’m not above this kind of thing, but Orgazmo was rated NC-17 and was not an action film with a toy line geared for kids.

Sex aside, what else made this movie an incomprehensible mess?

First, I cannot believe that the language in the movie (when one can understand it through the explosions and screaming) is pg-13. “pussy”, “asshole”, “shit”, and I SWEAR someone said “fuck” – these are now PG-13 standards? And while it’s not language per se, is there ever going to come a day when people stop using phrases like “Not on my watch!” and
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!”?
Because, trite much?

Second, there are way too many bot on the screen, most of whom go unidentified. What’s the point of that?? I wanted to see the Autobots (yes, i’ll admit here that i was not dragged unwillingly to this film) and Decpticons go at it, but who were some of these guys? and why include new Minicons like the Pretender or the the kitchen appliances gone bad? Why does it seem that the Decepticon numbers flourished over the years, yet only a few Autobots made it to earth? And where the hell did Starscream find The Fallen after 19,000 years on earth??

Third, one cannot get from Giza to Jordan and back to Giza in under a day in foot. It even took the Israelites forty years. Also, one cannot see Giza from Petra. Nor should one be in CA in one scene and in Princeton two scenes later. It reads funny.

Fourth, it’s not just the racism which is a popular kvetch. It’s every ass shot, vixen is a baby-doll dress, scrotum joke, gay image, dog-on-dog action, famous midget cameo, and unfunny bit of toilet humor and crass imagery. And the mystery is, was this something the director did or was it something the writers did? I personally see Michael Bay’s handiwork in it (especially after watching Armageddon last night and realizing bay has become a WORSE director over the years, adding in nonsense that has nothing to do with the plot and certainly had nothing to do with good story-telling.

Fifth, when, oh when, will Sam just tell… uh… what’s-her-name that he loves his car way more than he loves her? And tha Bumblebee’s cooler in every imaginable way than she is?

And is it me, or is Megan Fox just. not. talented? At all. Not that Shia LaBoeuf is any better.

Sixth, say it with me a la Wanda Maximoff, “No mo’ slo-mo!”

I’m sure there’s more to kvetch about, but the horrible thing is that this could have been a better movie – one can see it in moments when the plot rears its enfeebled head between the crassness. Sadly, ROTF was “Bay-icized” before it would be that movie. I’m waiting for some talented SOB to re-cut ROTF into a watchable film a la “star wars: the phantom edit”, then show it to my nephew and hope he forgives me.

World of Krypton #3 and #4: Beyond the misleading covers. Beyond the non-surprise of Zod being a bastard. Beyond the attempts to make Alura sympathetic. Beyond the status quo changing event of a New Krypton. Beyond the Guardians wetting themselves in anxiety. Beyond all that, this is a Superman book. And wherever there is Superman, Superman is there. B-

Batman & Robin #1: After the whole Final Crisis extravaganza, I was more than a little unwilling to pick up a GMo book so soon, especially for a character I haven’t read since I was 11 or so. However, this seems to be the year when DC lures me into all of the Big Three books, as Batman (formerly Nightwing, formerly Robin) and Robin (formerly some bratty kid who needed a spanking way earlier in his life than he got one (there is a reason why it’s called “child-rearing”)) terrorize the poop out of Gotham City’s criminal element. And I like it. The characterizations are strong. The art.. well, let’s talk about the art. Frank Quitely’s style is immediately recognizable, even if you don’t know his name, and there are cams on the goodness and badness of this statement. It’s been said that his people are nothing more than sandbags topped by shrunken-apple heads. It’s also been said that he gives 3+ dimensions to otherwise flat pages. I’m in the camp of goodness. I haven’t been able to pinpoint what it is, but it is there. Seeing Batman and Robin leap out of a flying Batmobile, through the Bat-signal, and dazzle Commissioner Gordon as they land atop Police Headquarters was beyond “good enough” for me. A+

Ultimatum #4: I honestly cannot remember why I picked up this issue after calling the series “splatter porn” last month. I was so truly, deeply repulsed by the over-the-top imagery that I figured I was finished with it. Well, apparently not. And I truly don’t understand this purchase because I’ve never read any other Ultimates book in my life, so there’s no investment here. Maybe I’ve grown insensitive to it, or maybe I’ve become fascinated by it. Whichever the case may be, I’ll finish the series off next month. I will say this, though: in terms of multi-issue cross-over “events”, this is one in a great long while in which the core book is a perfectly clear story in and of itself. So, props on that. B

Uncanny X-Men #511: I knew I wasn’t going crazy with the rapidity of X-Men‘s publishing. This issue comes out only two weeks after the last, which is great because I was eager to see how the cliffhanger would be resolved. Is Jean coming back? Is Maddie going to get her first? Will Greg Land’s characters ever express an appropriate emotion in-panel? The answers, while satisfying, do unfortunately underline Matt Fraction’s one problem as an X-writer: the appearing and disappearing cast. And with the addition of one more character – and a well-beloved one, at that – he’d better learn to juggle better. A-

X-Men Forever #1: X-Men forever is like a long-lost reunion with a beloved ex then realizing there’s a reason you’re exes. F

New Mutants #2: I don’t like where this is going. Say “NO!” to Legion being a new team member, and “YES!” to the return of Rahne Sinclair!! A

Buck Rogers #1: Yeah, you really can’t go back home even if home has righteous art and an otherwise tight story. This may be the antidote to Sci Fi’s Flash Gordon (gag), but it still didn’t do it for me. Sorry, guys! C-