DRUNKEN COMICS 002: I DUNNO WHICH HURTS MORE: MY LIVER OR MY BRAIN

I’m not gonna lie, Internet: this time it was Cactus Cooler with vodka in it. We’re calling it a Motorhome Mimosa. We bought Cactus Cooler months ago and only drank a couple of them, at which point we were startled to find out that it's just orange-pineapple soda with a cute name and not actually flavored like a cactus. It's tasty, though.


You guys think cactus juice isn't widely available due to a fear of accidentally drinking needles?


ULTIMATUM 004: MY BILE IS ON FIRE

(Loeb/Finch/Bin Laden)

For those of you lucky enough to not know what Ultimatum is, let me explain it so you can feel as bad as the rest of us: Jeph Loeb writes the Marvel Universe like an issue of Spawn. David Finch draws the Marvel Universe like an issue of Spawn, but an issue of Spawn drawn by David Finch.

Either way, it’s stupid. Stupid stupid stupid I hate it so much fuck you.

The plot: Magneto has some sort of evil plan because he’s a bad guy. In the process, lots of Marvel characters get killed in gruesome ways because that’s edgy and cool and it makes for cool poses where the hero holds his fallen comrade’s body in his arms like a groom carrying a bride over the threshold. This pose is LAME.

Page 6: Dormammu binds Doctor Strange in his own belt-scarf; Strange’s head swells and explodes like a John Carpenter flick but his body is left relatively intact. It’s a really sickening panel.

Yes, everyone: Jeph Loeb wrote a comic book where a head a sploding is not entertaining, but off-putting.


Page 12: Nick Fury: It’d help if there were a ROSCOE’S on this Godforsaken planet.

Yes, everyone: Jeph Loeb wrote a comic book where, amidst a planetary crisis, a black person bemoans the fact that he can’t get any chicken. Is this a fucking Jerry Bruckheimer movie? Goddamn.

A couple panels down: Nick Fury: I was wondering when you bungholes would show up.

Yes, everone: Jeph Loeb wrote a comic book where a grown-ass man uses the word “Bunghole.”

Pages 19 - 20: Angel goes solo to attack the bad guys. Sabretooth bites off Angel’s wings and immediately gets an arrow in the eye.

Yes, everyone: Jeph Loeb wrote a comic book where a shirtless Fabio thought he could take on the megalomaniacal bad guys all by himself and nobody questioned the stupidity of it.

Page 22: Thor-Girl lops off Magneto’s arm. Magneto’s reaction: “!”

Yes, everyone: Jeph Loeb wrote a comic wherein a Holocaust survivor makes a Metal Gear Solid reference.


Jeph Loeb is ruining comic books and we’re all letting this happen. We're the Germans who elected Hitler.

I’m not even talking about superhero comics. The ACTUAL MEDIUM is worse for Ultimatum existing.

Jeph Loeb's other recent atrocity was Ultimates 3. Read why Ultimates 3 #1 is the worst comic ever published by a major company.

SECRET SIX 009 & 110: MORE LIKE SECRET SEX

(Simone/Scott)

Secret Six is a sexy comic -- the only superhero comic that battles Uncanny X-Men in sexiness. I’ve talked about it before and I shall talk about it again. It’s sexy. Sex sex sex.

Issue #9 is a Battle for the Cowl crossover.

Fuck!


Despite this tie-in nonsense, it’s a great standalone issue that doesn’t require very much knowledge of a crossover I don’t care about. All you need to know: Batman died, everyone’s wondering who will take up the mantle. This issue also features an appearance from Nightwing, who for some reason has billy clubs like Daredevil… why exactly? I hate Nightwing.

Issue #10 is less fun, as its mostly sets up the next story arc, with the Secret Six working for slave traders, but it certainly makes for good drama. It also reveals how reader can continue to root for our “heroes” -- the villains have to be a hundred times worse.

Funny thing about Secret Six: it’s a comic where our “heroes” throw the heads of henchmen through windows to scare other henchmen, but this is acceptable and welcomed. Ultimatum, however, is a comic book where Doctor Strange’s head explodes, and it is largely unacceptable and vomit-inducing. Why is that?

We can attribute this to the fact that Ultimatum is a stupid, stupid comic and Secret Six is one of the best non-Grant Morrison superhero books being published today -- it’s entertaining and well-written with characters that jump off the page and are infinitely lovable despite the reprehensible things they do.

Sad state of superhero comics: the characters of Secret Six are more alive than other superhero characters -- they bicker, have sex, make mistakes, and backstab one another left and right. They’re more human than the Justice League of America… yet they’re the villains?


DEAD RUN 001: SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE PROBABLY

(Cosby/Nelson/Biagini/Romero[Uncredited]/Miller[Uncredited])

Review of the first four pages of Dead Run #1:

Dead Run is an exciting, fast-paced cars-meets-corpses comic where the Road Warrior jams a cigarette into the eye of a Zombie Barbarian (Zombarian?) as he runs it over. Badass.

The strongest part of the book is the expressive, frenetic, anime-inspired art by Francesco Biagini. Never before has a zombie motorcycle gang looked so runoverable or so stickcigarettesintheeyeable!


Review of the rest of Dead Run #1:

When this inevitably gets optioned by a Hollywood studio I’m going to be very very cross.

AIR 009: JUST TO GET THE TASTE OUT OF MY MOUTH

(Wilson/Perker)

See? I’m being diverse this time. Only two superhero titles, one whatever-the-hell-Dead-Run is, and one proper comic book where the only person who wears tights is a ballerina.

[Too bad I sobered up and forgot to finish this. I’ll do it utterly sober, totally rambling, and two weeks late. Fuck.]

Vertigo books worry me. Have you seen the monthly sales charts? Have you seen how much these things sell? Scalped will probably last because it’s got overwhelming support from critics and those readers-in-the-know. Ditto Northlanders and DMZ. The franchise books (Unknown Soldier, Madame Xanadu, House of Secrets) aren’t going anywhere until low sales decide they need to (see: Human Target). Fables is currently the longest running book, and people love it. The Unwritten might enjoy the same success. We’ll see.

Hellblazer, however, will never, ever go away.

Which leaves Air, which I assume is too weird for most readers to get into. It doesn’t have the immediately overt fantasy trappings of, say, Fables, but it’s not as real-world and gritty as Scalped. How do you even explain Air to someone? Fables is “All the fairy tale characters are real and interact with one another,” Scalped is “a crime drama taking place on an Indian reservation,” but what of Air? It’s about a flight attendant with a fear of flying who is caught between a terrorist organization and some mysterious good guys… or so it seems. Also, she’s capable of traveling between dimensions. It’s such a hard sell, and Vertigo’s other hard sell, Young Liars, has already been canceled. Is Air next?


I don’t remember what happened in the previous installment (my own lack of reading comprehension, I assure you), but #9 feels like one of those winding down episodes that you’d see at the end of a season of The Sopranos or Mad Men. There’s not a whole lot of adventure or excitement except that our heroine, Blythe, is carrying a device to hand off to the good-guys-who-might-be-the-bad-guys.

Air is about many things: religion, geography, technology, transdimensional aeronautics -- with post-9/11 concerns slathered all over -- but it’s also about airline travel (“airport hijinks,” as G. Willow Wilson herself deems it). This issue returns to that form as Blythe solves a fairly mundane airport problem (compared to previous issues) via lucky synchronicity and suddenly remembers that the world is a big complicated place where serendipitous things happen -- using the micro to see the macro.

Air is a good comic that’s shaping up to be a great comic. Wilson’s a bit of a newbie to the form professionally and each issue of Air is another installment of an artist honing her craft. Let’s be patient. It’s only nine issues in, for God’s sake.

It seems like Air’s been getting mixed reviews all over the place, which makes me wonder if we should rate a Vertigo book on the same standards that we rate a G.I. Joe comic. Do we praise a Transformers comic as being “okay for what it is” yet trash something more ambitious like Air for its failings? Does one of the few comics with a non-exploited female hero deserve a bit of a pass on principle? We need more Airs, and less… everything else.