A Frank Review of "Iron Man 3" (2013)

The Short Version? Lethal Weapon Mark VI
What Is It? Super-Hero Flick.
Who Is In It? The American Sherlock Holmes, Marty Kaan, Mahatma Gandhi, Peter Weyland and Holly Holliday
Should I See It? Maybe



Following up on both the previous installments and Marvel's The Avengers, Tony Stark is trying to get on with domestic life alongside Pepper Potts while suffering through panic attacks related to the alien invasion of New York. An international terrorist known only as The Mandarin runs afoul of Iron Man, and then things get a bit twisted up.

Iron Man 3 is clearly the worst film of the series to date. That doesn't make it a bad movie, as evidenced by the near-universally orgasmic reviews I've read. It's just not as good as you've heard, and I think once the afterglow wears off, folks will find that it's quite a bit less than its predecessors in the staying power department.



I've been a fan of Robert Downey Jr. for decades, but there was a ten year span or so there where a season on Ally McBeal would be considered a period highlight. 2005's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was a career game changer, in which Downey was not only at his best, but co-star Val Kilmer and writer/director Shane Black were right there with them. Downey continued rebuilding, and landing the lead in Iron Man was the result. In the five years since, we've seen a lot of the guy, but his schtick has devolved through public repetition into the sort of self-satisfied lazy smugness that recalls early '90s Eddie Murphy. Seemingly in response to this, Iron Man 3 tries to take Downey back to the scrappy down-on-his-luck hooligan Harry Lockhart with Shane Black in tow. What it does instead is recall a modern masterpiece during more pedestrian fare where the needs of keeping Robert Downey Jr. happy are now paramount, rather than his ability to serve the role of Tony Stark.

Jon Favreau faced an awful lot of undue criticism for his second directorial turn on Iron Man, and when he was denied The Avengers, he quit the franchise to do Cowboys & Aliens. Favreau seems to have been eating his feelings since, with a visible bloat as he offers a guest turn in a series he used to run. He has even less screen time in his ongoing cameos as bodyguard Happy Hogan than before, and despite seeming to be intended to serve as a motivating factor for Tony in the new film, I'd forgotten all about the character until the film's coda. Pepper Potts was similarly sidelined, turning up in a few early scenes and then dropping out for most of the flick until the big resolution. The presence I did miss throughout the film was Jon Favreau as the director, and one of my first complaints about replacement Shane Black was the obligatory early nods then dispatching of the characters Favreau found necessary in his films.



Ben Kingsley is a gas as the Mandarin for his relatively slight screen time, but his development seemed driven more by an avoidance of the complications Fu Manchu with power rings presented than true innovation. Guy Pearce has two notes as Aldrich Killian, but no power chords. I saw potential in Rebecca Hall as Maya Hansen, vaguely recalling Madeleine Stowe in her glory days, but the role deflates rapidly. James Badge Dale and Stephanie Szostak chew some mean scenery, but they're just muscle. When Ty Simpkins as the adorable boy helper outshines William Sadler and Miguel Ferrer, you've wasted their talents on throwaway parts.

Gone is the cock rock of AC/DC and the punk tunes that helped define Tony Stark, replaced by forgettable tracks and score. No ostentatious displays of wealth and power. No shameless flirtation with gorgeous ladies. Forget about convincing technobabble once you apply anime logic to the Iron Man armor or have Tony Stark bypasses Radio Shack for Home Depot while in dire straits for equipment needs. There's now a kid sidekick, and the genius that invented an arc reactor out of scraps in a cave decides to become a hoodie ninja with gadgets Data from Goonies would have smirked at. The lead character offers omniscient narration that's pointless until the stinger. The one established character with a meaningful presence is Colonel James Rhodes, played by Don Cheadle, who replaced Terrence Howard in the role. Rhodey is essential to recreating the black/white buddy cop aesthetic of Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, and The Long Kiss Goodnight, all written by Shane Black. In fact, the whole movie feels like a greatest hits collection of Black's other movie moments. Of course there's a torture scene. Of course it's set during Christmas. Of course the finale takes place on an abandoned oil platform at night, which is totally different than the abandoned dock yard in Lethal Weapon 2. Again, I'm a fan, but that makes the constant regurgitation that much more tiresome.



Listen, I'm not a pseudonym for Armond White. There's plenty of dumb fun to be had with this roller coaster, and the over-the-top action is very much of the flavor one would hope from a comic book adaptation. The story logic is appalling, but there's kicks to be had with your brain switch in the "off" position. I'd probably be more positive if this was a spin-off War Machine movie, but as the seemingly final installment of an unplanned trilogy? Not so much. It feels set apart from the first two movies, and rushes through massive aspects of closure at the end in a jarring yet perfunctory fashion. For all it gets right, overall the film feels wrong as a sequel to the Favreau efforts. Ultimately, what it serves to prove is that perhaps the franchise not only could survive the departure of the increasingly expensive Robert Downey Jr., but perhaps should at this point, since much of his spirit and that of the enterprise has left the building.

Saturday is Free Comic Book Day For All I Care #174

Adventure Time Free Comic Book Day Edition
Anna & Froga
Bad Medicine #1 Free Comic Book Day Edition
Barnaby and Mr. O'Malley Free Comic Book Day Edition #1
Burt Ward: Boy Wonder
The Censored Howard Cruse
Graphic Elvis: Free Comic Book Day Special Preview
The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel: The Manga: free preview #1
Moomin Valley Turns Jungle
Mouse Guard: Labyrinth and Other Stories
Peanuts Free Comic Book Day Edition
Top Shelf Kids Club 2012
Voltron Force: Shelter from the Storm FCBD
Wrath Of The Titans Classic


Last year, my comic supplier of the previous decade allowed me to buy as many FCBD items as I wanted at a rate of about 2-3 for a dollar and even shipped them ahead of the event. At that time, this was a weekly column, so long as I could get my hands on enough material to warrant a review. FCBD resolved that issue, as I covered the major corporate releases, the commercially safe genre material from the minors, the cooler kiddie fare, the multimedia licensed stuff, some tits and blood fodder, before a last gasp with Lo-Rent Sci-Fi. That was last fall, by which point most of the books the spring FCBD event was promoting had already come out. My reviewing schedule started to slip in a major way, and after sitting out three whole months, I have a serious back catalog to burn through. I switched suppliers last year, and while I maintain accounts with both, I never seemed to be able to preorder any FCBD comics. After watching an "unboxing" video last week, I don't feel that's any great loss, but I really should knock out these 2012 opinions while there's still the faintest wiff of relevancy about them...




Adventure Time / Peanuts Free Comic Book Day Edition (kaboom!, 2012, Free)
I understand that Adventure Time is a big cable TV hit that has brought readers to comics, and it is easy to see why. The characters are instantly accessible and endearing, speaking consistently amusing lines in service to charmingly goofy plots. The character designs perfectly balance the simplicity to best convey emotion and the uniqueness to offer immediate iconic reference for type/purpose. I like these guys, enjoyed each of their three tales, and was impressed by the versatility of their presentation under wildly different (and quite atypical) artists. It has the vitality of Liquid Television without all the trial and error failure that comes with experimentation, applied to a structure suitable for children without pandering to them. Very impressive.

Peanuts is Peanuts. I believe that this is the exact same material that I already got in a dollar special from 2011.




Anna & Froga/Moomin Valley Turns Jungle (Top Shelf, 2012, Free)
After reading several kid-skewing FCBD samplers in a row and enjoying none of them, I began to feel like a Grinch. Perhaps I was simply too soulless, arrogant and demanding to appreciate these gentle efforts? Then I read the Adventure Time book, and realized that the other titles were shit. Anna and Froga, for instance, is shit. Anouk Ricard is a poor artist who gets away with it because patronizing adults think kids want art that looks like it was drawn by kids. When I was a kid, I wanted José Luis García-López, not infantile crap my own meager "skill" could conjure up. I suppose Rob Liefeld fell somewhere between those two extremes, which you would think was another matter entirely, but Ricard's writing actually manages to be sub-Liefeld as well.

I'm not as strongly opposed to Moomin, but it did remind of those weird old black and white cartoons kids are forced to watch because we loved and were placated by all forms of animation, right? Wrong. This is weird and foreign and meandering and if there are any jokes my culture doesn't get them and what sort of nightmare landscape was the Fleisher studio trying to craft anyway? Cantsleeporthefleawilldrinkmyblood.




Bad Medicine #1 Free Comic Book Day Edition (Oni Press, 2012, Free)
I want to support a book with a black lead and a female lead, but not one that sucks this hard with grating teeth. Christopher Mitten's art is of the type that makes me not want to read a comic, as it's all flat and scribbly and ugly. It takes really good writing to make up for art this nasty, especially when coupled with the grody coloring of Bill Crabtree. Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir are instead the diarrhea frosting on this cake of shit. The plot is low rent X-Files knock-off involving a scientific experiment and disappearing heads, but the script is pure garbage NCIS dialogue of the sort never spoken by human beings not on a soundstage meeting the low expectations of drama for rrrrreally stupid people like your aunt whose pussy gets drenched over Mark Harmon, who she has a framed picture of on her nightstand. There was not a single character in this book that I didn't want to punch in the temple with an icepick, and the creative team should probably be lined up for one continuous formation slap like Moe Howard used to bring in days of old. Don't forget the back-up creators of the Wasteland strip in the punitive formation, as their promo was surprisingly inept considering their book has reached 44 issues even though 99.999% of readers do not know that series exists.




Barnaby and Mr. O'Malley Free Comic Book Day Edition #1 (Fantagraphics Books, 2012, Free)
When a publisher goes out of its way to tell you how great and important a reprint book is, you should find it suspect. Peanuts doesn't require that kind of hard sell. Crockett Johnson might have been something back in 1942, and his strip seems more palatable than its contemporaries, but after sixty years all the innovations and the gags have been absorbed and improved upon. I didn't hate the half of an adventure featured here, but I did find myself checking how many pages were left repeatedly. I also hope the hardcovers solve the problem of landscape presentation, because running two four panel strips across a spread is counterintuitive for readers and leaves a sea of dead space on the pages.




Burt Ward: Boy Wonder / Wrath Of The Titans Classic (Bluewater, 2012, Free)
Bluewater Comics continues to be the place to be for creators of such small self-worth, talent and/or business acumen that they would choose to give their work away to an unscrupulous publisher whose successes could be described as paltry were that not an overstatement. I don't understand how Darren G. Davis could hold the copyright to "Wrath of the Titans" when it so clearly infringes on Clash of the Titans, but perhaps there's no need to mount a defense over so forgettable a slight. The book tries to dub itself "Classic" by offering a page of silent comic art against a page of prose. It is an essential violation of "show, don't tell," and betrays a complete ignorance of the fundamentals of comic book mechanics on the part of the creators. The six pages of art are already far more than would be needed to depict a guy scaling an unstable mountain ledge, but all the six pages of prose do is awkwardly insert dialogue and unnecessary description where heavily edited captions and some balloons should be. If you're going to do this type of thing, spend one page of art on the scaling, and a full page of text at a reasonable font size describing the struggle in such fine detail as to require prose be utilized at all. Then maybe they'd convey a chapter of a story instead of paragraph of a dry travelogue.

On the flip side, Burt Ward: Boy Wonder is so terrible that it almost makes the first story seem adequate. It's bad enough to tout the license of likeness from a gray, largely forgotten celebrity who was a childhood favorite of people who would be called "middle-aged" only out of kindness, and worse to use the resultant book to champion their pet cause of animal shelters. The worst though is when you restore said celebrity to their glory days through painfully convoluted means, revert to unappealing gray tones, and force them to look and act like a tedious character they played nearly half a century ago that still has a publishing life elsewhere while constantly pointing out the flaws of the story within the story itself. Never have I so wanted to see fatcat scumbag lawyers from a monolithic corporation roll in to crush the little guy who for once happens to be even more detestable. I will say that Ramon Salas illustrated and colored both stories with a quality that deserves better than this. Get out of this abusive relationship before that son of a bitch breaks your arm and kills your children!


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The Censored Howard Cruse Free Comic Book Day Edition (BOOM! Town, 2012, Free)
This was a frustrating read because of the black bars and other redacted elements that sometimes confused the narrative, but there are no flies of Cruse's unobscured efforts. From bawdy trips down fancifully adulterated memory lane to sadly timeless political satire, Cruse works it like a boss in story and art. By the end, you'll want to order The Other Sides of Howard Cruse, and maybe even donate to the CBLDF, if their edits don't infuriate you too much.


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Graphic Elvis: Free Comic Book Day Special Preview (Liquid Comics, 2012, Free)
Liquid Comics was basically formed out of the rotting carcass of notorious starfuckers Virgin Comics, so it's no wonder this book is like higher end Bluewater. I thoroughly enjoyed it for free, since I love The King of Rock n' Roll and pin-ups by Gilbert Hernandez, John Cassaday, Steve Rude, Tony Millionaire, M. S. Corley, Luke Ross, Paul Pope and yes by some fluke even Greg Horn. However, pairing each pin-up with a page of probable photo reference kind of breaks a dick off in their asses, and the various quotes/text inserts aren't exactly substantial. Despite occasional strips by the likes of Chris Eliopoulos and Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Jeevan Kang, this thing is seriously insubstantial, so pimping a $195.00 collectible limited to 2,500 copies is something of a pipedream when your target demographic is suffering from Alzheimer's in an assisted living community on a fixed income. Despite its "scarcity," you can pick it up at a 50% discount for an unlimited time at this point. Call me when it hits $10, and "enjoy" this pants-drenchingly douchey motion comic...




The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel: The Manga: free preview #1 (Yen Press, 2012, Free)
I finally started watching Game of Thrones, which is a fantastic show that overcomes all of my biases against the fantasy genre. This led me to view the Conan the Barbarian remake, which I dug as a comic in my youth and starred one of the less utilized badasses from Game of Thrones. I'd only intended to watch a half hour or so, but the narrative was so propulsive and undemanding that I can't believe I vegged out for the whole thing. The script avoided a few expected cliche turns and was generally inoffensive, while the acting ranged from rote to laughable (Rose McGowen specifically.) It was like a mediocre round of masturbation-- time spent in a pleasant enough manner, but in retrospect you wouldn't mind getting it back and putting it to better use.

The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel is more Conan the Barbarian than Game of Thrones. What's offered leads to the conclusion that this is Steampunk Sherlock Holmes versus the supernatural. The characters are amiable enough, the premise is comfortable and the pacing is brisk. Had the story continued right there in my lap I would have contentedly read it. However, the storytelling is arch and clunky, the art undistinguished, and the broad characters are prone to exposition. My life was not enriched, and once my concentration was broken by the preview's stopping point, I felt no great need for the resolution a purchase might bring.


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Mouse Guard: Labyrinth and Other Stories: A Free Comic Book Day Hardcover Anthology (Archaia, 2012, Free)
At this time last year, Archaia was a fantasy-skewing also-ran with a dodgy record regarding creator compensation. Coming out with this delightful mini-hardcover helped wipe a lot of that bad will away. This thing has endpapers, a table of contents, creator biographies, and even space provided to write in who the book belongs to. Quite charming, no?

• David Peterson's "Mouse Guard: The Tale of Baldwin the Brave" was a touching series of shorts that perfectly combined pictures and prose.
• "Labyrinth: Hoggle and the Worm" was more of a novelty, but the creative team captures the look and voices of the beloved movie's characters.
• "Steps of the Dapper Men" was excerpted from a graphic novel, and I couldn't make hide nor hair of it outside that context. Janet K. Lee's art was meticulous, though.
• "Rust: Oswald's Letter" was also problematic on its own. I could follow the story, but it lacked emotional resonance without my having read about these characters previously.
• "Cursed Pirate Girl: Ramblings From An Old Sea Dog Who Likes To Be Called Alice" was a fun lark.
• Nate Cosby's "Cow Boy: Long While Ago" was curiously poignant, which Chris Eliopoulos' art sold to the hilt. A great closing chapter to an already impressive reintroduction to Archia.

Top Shelf Kids Club (Drawn & Quarterly, 2012, Free)
This was your basic waste of time. Owly as a character is well designed by Andy Runton, but it's odd how a silent four page story with a splash could manage to feel tedious through stretching out a narrow concept. I didn't quite "get" the Korgi tale, but appreciated the illustrative flare of Christian Slade. Chris Eliopoulos' Okie Dokie Donuts was arbitrary and wouldn't have been my bag at any age. Pirate Penguin vs. Ninja Chicken was exactly what it sounds like, snark and pop culture reference presented as though they were plot and characterization, plus the art looked shit without color. Upside Down was alright, but the art of Jess Smart Smiley was amateurish. I had hoped James Kochalka could salvage this affair, but his final entry was one of the bigger duds.




Voltron Force: Shelter from the Storm Free Comic Book Day Edition (Viz, 2012, Free)
Enough money was poured into this project to make it resoundingly competent. From a production standpoint, everything is tip-top. It's just that for 27 pages, good characters or bad, everyone is barking orders and being dicks to one another. I'm not much in the market for giant robot cats fighting Japanese monsters in space to begin with, but once it's been cleaned up and anglicized, the bloodless product leaves me cold.

Wednesday One in One Way or Another #173

G.I. Joe Special Missions #1 (2013)
Mind MGMT: One for One
Morning Glories #26
The Shadow: Year One #1




G.I. Joe Special Missions #1 (IDW, 2013, $3.99)
I was a big fan of the Joes as a kid, and Marvel put out an involving sci-fi military soap opera back then. I've sampled G.I. Joe comic product since Dark Horse's pathetic '90s attempt at a revival and Devil's Due's successful one of the early aughts. Still, I'm not a kid anymore, we're no longer in Reagan America, and the nostalgia trip was the only limited draw for me. I couldn't buy into it as a generational saga, not wanting to own Despero Junior or anything from the last several years of the toy line. I also found overly serious attempts at portraying the Joes in a post-9/11 world distasteful.

Like its namesake, the good thing about Special Missions is that it seems to be somewhat divorced from the greater "saga" of toy soldiers fighting cartoony snake-themed terrorists and just tells a cool action-packed story. I bought this book because Chuck Dixon is reliable in writing this kind of affair, and the promise of Paul Gulacy drawing the Baroness was too fabulous to ignore. I continue to miss the tone shading in Gulacy's work, but the dude can still slather ink for leather in all its fetishistic glory, and he's great on the spy stuff. He's a little more wonky on the desert combat in the harsh light of day, but the colorist covers for that. This is light adventure with a slick sheen, and I think I'd be in the market for a reasonably priced trade paperback to complete the tale.




Mind MGMT: One for One (Dark Horse, 2012/2013, $1.00)
So look-- here's the thing. I'm okay with this sort of writerly DIY artwork in a biographical hipster Drawn & Quarterly tome telling a story too niche to attract an actual draw-er type person who needs to pay their rent. I'll even allow for it on something like Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth, where the awkward indie vibe is meant to contrast against the cliché apocalyptic genre setting. Mind MGMT on the other hand is firmly established as a thriller in this debut issue, and I don't find funky amateurish artwork thrilling. This is basically an update of those old Jim Steranko S.H.I.E.L.D. stories that figured counterculture psychedelica into its goofy sci-spy intrigue, but drowning in Fantagraphical pretension with its obtuse narrative, metatextual quirks, and its being a fucking eyesore.

Remember that Julianne Moore movie where she thinks she lost her son in a plane crash, but everyone tells her she never had a son, or that Jodie Foster movie where her daughter goes missing on a plane flight and no one believes she even brought a daughter on board? This is like that, but without anything exciting or engaging happening. There's some violent shit at the beginning that isn't explained, and then a plane full of people being introduced to mass amnesia, and then some chick at wit's end trying to figure out what happened. I don't give a fuck. Maybe is Paul Gulacy drew the chick in her underwear instead of writer/penciler/inker/colorist/hubrist Matt Kindt, but probably not even then. There's just too little to go on story wise, and too much ill will built up in such a short span of pages, that I cannot bring myself to care.




Morning Glories #26 (Image, 2013, $1.00)
Pardon my French, but Nick Spencer is a stupid motherfucker. This book normally sells about 8,000 copies. This special sampler issue retails for a dollar, which means your shop paid about fifty-cents per copy. Diamond Distribution probably takes a sizable percentage as well, so lets says that with the temporary sales boost Image grosses four grand on this issue. Once you factor in production costs like talent and printing, the sub-studio Shadowline is probably in the red. It's what they call a "loss leader," where you offer a product at such a deep discount that it costs the seller money, with the intention of "getting people through the door" to buy other stuff. You take a hit on one in order to sell more.

Based on that premise, this comic fails spectacularly. I read the first trade a couple of years ago, and liked it well enough, but wasn't compelled to keep reading from there. If a publisher wants to hook new readers, prime candidates would be guys like me with a passing familiarity, or better yet, an entirely fresh audience. That isn't going to happen when your sampler comic is a thunderous "FUCK YOUUUU" to anyone who hasn't read the previous twenty-five issues, and I mean all of them. Shit is impenetrable. I have vague recollections of the basic premise of Morning Glories and still don't have a friggin' clue about who 95% of the characters in this story are or even a rudimentary understanding of what is going on. There's a blond girl named Casey who might have been the star of the first "season," but she might be new to this second one, but I'm not sure and it isn't made clear. She dresses up like the evil teacher from the debut volume, or maybe the star of the first volume is another person, and Casey is the new star or something. Seriously, I'm not going to pull that first trade off the shelf just to make the slightest sense of what the fuck is going on here, because that's not how this kind of goddamned thing is supposed to work. I'm actually not joking about being kind of pissed right now that I'm even being asked to make that kind of effort, so I can imagine how annoying this would be for the completely uninitiated. There are nine "silent" pages that act like the opening of All-Star Superman, which had a series of disconnected images that were perfectly understandable to a world made intimately familiar with the Man of Steel over the last 75 years. The same technique applied to a minor Image comic read by less than ten thousand people goes beyond mental retardation into a near catatonic state of storytelling. There are three splash pages with a single line of dialogue, and three pages wasted Jonathan Hickman style on a "credit sequence" announcing the title of the book against a stark background. I want to kick something right now, like that guy from the Charles Atlas ads once he got home from the beach.

Also, I still hate looking at Joe Eisma's drawy-drawn drawings representing people and objects that look like drawings that the talents of colorist Alex Sollazzo barely make palatable. I've been to three conventions Eisma attended and have been magnanimous enough to try to figure out one character I think that he could draw adequately as a commission, but can't bring myself to actually put money in his hand because it feels like an unforgivable ethical compromise to encourage him to continue his "craft." Maybe he'll read this and confront me and I can hit him because I totally want to hit somebody over this book. This is the Lindsay Lohan of comics-- irredeemably squandering enormous opportunities in favor of being as infuriatingly worthless as possible. Fuck all'y'all.




The Shadow: Year One #1 (Dynamite, 2013, $3.99)
I realize that in 2013, "socialite" is a euphemism for "vacuous monied whore with a catalog entry at Vivid," but I don't think that's what it meant when Margo Lane was created as the female lead in a 1937 radio program. Can we maybe try to allow a forerunner to modern feminism and a probable influence on the creation of Lois Lane enough dignity to not survive as a mobster's joy toy and blackmailing babymama? Matt Wagner, you wrote Sandman Mystery Theater. You're better than that. The rest of the comic is okay, and I quite liked the art of Wilfredo Torres, who reflected a period vibe without being enslaved to it. Dug Brennan Wagner's antique palette as well.

New Crusaders, Book One: Rise of the Heroes (2013)

I've always wanted to like the MLJ-Archie super-heroes, but never have. When I say something like "I'm not a big fan of Alan Moore," it feeling like a confession, but that's more the statement of an obvious, near universal truth. There are dozens, perhaps even hundreds of people across the globe who legitimately like these early entries in the genre, but I think the vast majority of readers who care in any way are like me, more enthused about the idea of them existing than the printed evidence of such.

MLJ got its start in 1939 with the super-hero boom, and proceeded to churn out one unoriginal example after another with the sole initial innovation of inventing the brazenly patriotic Shield. The Comet wasn't too bad, but he wasn't terribly popular, so he was the first super-hero to be murdered. His brother donned a costume to avenge his death, and the Hangman hung around for a few years as a more right-leaning Batman, which was a cool development. Beyond that though, the MLJ heroes were also-rans, and when the boom began to bust in 1943, MLJ shifted focus to a more reliable moneymaker. Archie Andrews became the greatest star of teen-skewing humor comics, taking over the entire company. During lucrative super-hero revivals in the '60s, '80s, and '90s, the old MLJ heroes were trotted out to try to siphon off the waves, failed every time, and died a swift death. I had several of the ugly, inferior Remco Mighty Crusaders action figures meant to appeal to fans of Kenner's Super Powers Collection and Mattel's Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars, which can still be had decades later on their original cards as whole sets on eBay for less than single figures from the lines they imitated. My brother and I also tried most of the early !mpact Comics, wherein DC Comics proved that they had the talent and marketing heft to limp along for three years licensing the characters whereas Archie would typically just cut their loses after a year.

There are numerous complex reasons why the Archie super-heroes have never gone over, but the most succinct rational is that they're lukewarm mercenary crap featuring cheesy bygone concepts, typically produced by hacks and nobodies with their finger resting firmly on the toenail of the market. Just a few years ago, masochists that they are, DC licensed the characters again and tried to relaunch them on the back of a J. Michael Straczynski revamp, except the guy only wrote four introductory one-shots before DC turned the project over to whoever was open in the freelancer pool. It seemed strange that Archie would turn around and offer another take in a short span of time, where usually they let the stink fade for a decade or two. Not to be cynical, but given their history, it's hard not to see New Crusaders as a means of promoting their online subscription service allowing access to the entire catalog of decades of failure to make a dent in the market. I'm sure keeping the intellectual property alive at a time when super-hero films are huge at the box office is another side benefit. They've been pretty open about their willingness to lease these things out.

Alternately, New Crusaders: Rise of the Heroes is a vanity project for Archie talent to do super-heroes as formulaically as possible, which for me is worse than it being a cash grab, because I would hate to crush their dreams of adequacy. The premise is that the events of all of the stories published by Archie subsidiaries are still in continuity, but the stars of all those books just died in a fire, leaving the mantles to their teenage offspring/wards. It's screwed right there at the premise, because these "new" Crusaders would be pushing thirty even if you only factored in the '80s stories, but they make a point of reaching back to 1940s material just to insure you can't get past the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff. The Archie touch is there by starting the story in the very staid, whitebread Riverdale type setting of "Red Circle," which had known peace for all of the kids' lives. Rather than any sort of meritocracy, the kids are immediately positioned to succeed their parents by the demands of inheritance, despite their having been blissfully unaware of their heritage and having had no training whatsoever. Nothing like Caucasian entitlement to get you rooting for these chumps.

There are two non-white tokens, who are singled out as having not been sired as direct seed of Crusaders. The Comet's chief defining characteristics are being colored darker than the other kids and having to share his origin with a white boy. Jaguar's main characteristics are crippling social anxiety and having borrowed most directly from !mpact. Also, these are the two characters with the least and most distressingly catastrophic control of their abilities. I think Brad Paisley wrote "Accidental Racist" about this comic. Of course, that's still better than Steel Sterling, who lacks any discernible personality, or the gratingly obnoxious Fireball, which I'm sure won't foreshadow his story arc at all. Fly Girl and the Web are the best of the lot by virtue of not being irritating and hovering in the outer orbit of actual characterization. The team is led by the Shield, who is basically a more abrasive and reckless Captain America. Even by the dim standards of parental guidance set by the super-hero genre, the Shield manages to limbo under the bar in the field of child endangerment. There is literally a talking monkey in this book who would better serve these kids.

Ben Bates' art style is a poor man's Bruce Timm/Mike Parobeck/Ty Templeton, but gets a little problematic when the first issue ends with a massacre. Getting a pass as all-ages fare is prohibited when blood gushes out of an office drone's every orifice or cops are murdered gangland execution style during a prison riot, so Bates and (admittedly seamless) relief artist Alitha Martinez shouldn't have tried to sit at the big kids' table. The storytelling and character "acting" are overblown in a cartoony American way with Japanese manga touches. The western elements make the violence uncomfortable in a way Ian Flynn's script isn't prepared to address, and the eastern ones reinforce this as a contemporary work that disallows the quaint wrongness of stuff like Micky Mouse contemplating suicide in comic strips released at the only point in history where these characters halfway worked. The character designs are mind-numbing in their mediocrity, like a dish with every bit of flavor boiled out of it. They make DC's maligned efforts with this lot look like the height of haute couture by comparison. Origins are dispensed with as dutifully dull as possible, better recalling Strikeforce: Morituri than the magic rings and mad science of old. I tried to cut the book some slack by recognizing the number of characters that needed to be introduced in the span of a mini-series, but then I watched the Game of Thrones pilot for the first time, where the same challenge was met and overcome about a zillion times better than this. If the writer couldn't handle seven leads, he should have given us a P.O.V. character instead of wall-to-wall tropes.

New Crusaders: Rise of the Heroes is what I refer to as a "Phantom Menace." There's always that one joker who thinks they could have done a better job with a work of art, and insists on regaling you with their "improvements." In the case of a "Phantom Menace" though, the entire audience becomes a righteous incarnation of that guy, because you're being subjected to a piece so wrong-headed that you can't help but editorialize in a constructive way. This book looks like it should be kid friendly, so where is the adventure of Carl Barks' Ducks, or the warmth of Pixar, or the abandon of Axe Cop, or even the accessible low comedy of Shreck? Why is it so grim in such a common way that you might as well give a kid a flashier DC/Marvel offering with more well-rounded characters? Thanks to the decompressed storytelling, this book has the same deliberate pacing as every other comic on the stands, but doesn't take that opportunity to develop their characters or deepen the plotting. It reminds me of how aspiring artists can't look at the most dubious bottom rung talents as their competition, because those guys are already getting work for reasons that escape you, and who throws good money after bad that stays in business? There's nothing remotely new about these Crusaders; they are virtually interchangeable with anything else in the market, without any cause for recommending it above the rest of the dreck.

Wednesday, all my troubles seemed so far away, now it looks as though they're here to stay, oh, I believe in Wednesday #172

Hellblazer #300
Infestation: Sketchbook
Justice League of America #1 (2013)
Justice League of America's Vibe #1
John Carter: The Gods of Mars #1 (2012)
Sex #1 (2013)
Star Trek Countdown to Darkness #1
Star Wars #1 (2013)
Threshold presents The Hunted #1


It's been 2½ months since I did a review column. I had to move and my work schedule got shitty and I was tired and then I got better but I wanted to catch up with other blogs and the material to review wasn't all that engaging but it kept piling up and look just fucking live your life and I'll live mine, okay?



Hellblazer #300 (Vertigo, 2013, $4.99)
I seriously haven't followed this book since Ennis & Dillon left a decade and a half ago, so it's no great personal tragedy for me that DC just canceled its longest running title on the post-New 52 publishing slate so that they can relaunch a sanitized mainstream version that won't last 1/12th as long. It's just another reminder that DC isn't home for me anymore, and I'm increasingly casting my lot elsewhere, which is why there'll be a lot more Dirty Trader paperback reviews and less floppies 'round here. It doesn't help that John Constantine went out like a pussy. It isn't all Peter Milligan's fault, as there was at least a decade of Constantine mellowing, developing healthier relationships, getting de-clawed and spayed. Maybe him and the missus would have popped out some kids, and become house-proud, and after that exceptionally lengthy wind-up the whole family would have been raped and murdered by demons. That would have served Constantine right, and he could have descended into a properly irredeemable bastard, but who needs a hundred issues of set up for all that? This book touched on oodles of supporting characters and storylines, many involving hero-worshiping of John, and it's hard not to see him as a washed up rock star who hasn't had anything to say in ages and should have long ago choked on his own vomit for the sake of his legacy. Giuseppe Camuncoli's artwork is perfectly fine for crime comics, but seems incapable of arousing the sort of dread required of "contemporary horror," or whatever marketing buzzwords DC were trying out in 1988. The extra length final issue doesn't have a celebrity afterward or send-off pin-up gallery or anything. It's just an extended wimper, a Bridges to Babylon when we'd all have druthered leave things at Voodoo Lounge. It's sad for all the wrong reasons.



Infestation: Sketchbook (IDW, 2011)
I think that this was some kind of incentive book that I picked up cheap sight unseen and regret a little bit. It's nothing but uncolored sketches of licensed characters zombified, like browsing through a Comic Art Fans gallery in 2006. Lame.


Justice League of America #1 (DC, 2013, $3.99)
As usual in the modern age of decompressed storytelling, there was a lot more sizzle than steak. Most of the book is two people having a meeting in an office while looking at photographs. Did we learn nothing from the Brad Meltzer debacle other than to condense seven issues of this stuff into one extra-sized edition? It doesn't help that one of those people is the anorexic New 52 Amanda Waller, "The Pole," the "Non-Supporting Wall," "Weight Watchers Waller." Everybody in the New 52 is a fucking supermodel.

I have to say that one thing set right by the reboot was the restoration of Steve Trevor. It's okay for Batman to have a James Bond type of impermanence with regard to his love interests, and even Superman shouldn't necessarily be tied down to Lois Lane, so long as she remains prominent in comics in general. Steve Trevor though is arguably as central a figure in Wonder Woman's origin as Diana herself, since he's the impetus and ongoing motivation for the Princess' abandoning Paradise Island to combat the evils of Man's World, and remained so until the 1970s. For nearly a quarter century, Wonder Woman didn't quite make sense as a character because Steve Trevor had been cast aside for past sins with nothing more than vague altruism and wanderlust left in his place (DC strongly squelching any emphasis on that "lust" part.) Returning him to prominence fixes a broken element of the DC Universe, and his being the rejected party in a past affair humbles and humanizes the once abusive figure. Further, that element of romance, even lost, enlivens Wonder Woman and ensures that Trevor won't join the long list of Nick Fury proxies. I'm hardly in love with Geoff Johns these days, but I think I'd be buying the Wonder Woman comic if he were writing it.

The individual team member vignettes are nice teaser trailers for whoever they're meant to be for the purposes of the book. I'm not sure if the line-up or the rationale of the group was conceived first, but it's hard to imagine someone setting out to build a true anti-Justice League and deciding these second stringers had the mettle. The twisted takes on some of the team members show potential, and Dave Finch's art is a hell of a lot easier on the eyes and storytelling sensibilities than Jim Lee's. The artist has an interesting take on the Martian Manhunter, having nothing to do with the more alien skull seen recently and favoring the classic look. His costume is rendered so heavily in shadow that the sometimes loud purples are agreeably muted, but Finch inexplicably draws a crude flower shape as the Manhunter's chest emblem. His threats just don't hold the same gravitas when he seems to be promoting no-skid shower stickers like a NASCAR driver in need of better sponsorship. I dug the reversion of Ivo back to a petrified man from that thug version seen the last time they decided to name a book Justice League of America. I've always thought that the Secret Society of Super-Villains was a great concept, so I'm happy DC is finally embracing it (without turning it into the Legion of Doom or Injustice Gang, which should be as different as the Avengers, Defenders, and the Champions before everyone became an Avenger.)

I can't say that I'm exactly excited about this book, but I'm not put off by the debut issue either, which is something of a victory with a New 52 offering.



Justice League of America's Vibe #1 (DC, 2013, $2.99)
Have you seen the trailer to the new Saint series? If I remember correctly, The Saint started out as a series of novels, but what most people remember is the 1960s TV series that served as an extended audition for the handsomeness and charm of Roger Moore to succeed Sean Connery as James Bond. There have been prior attempts at a revival, and the world has collectively given them a pass, as they should this new series. It stars some random dude with a British accent (like black people, they all look alike in Hollywood's eyes) in a by-the-numbers story that has its every plot point spoiled in the trailer, and the main twist is that they throw in Eliza Dushku (telling anagram: "Duh Suk".) The bloated corpse of Roger Moore is included in a cameo to punctuate what a terrible development this whole thing represents.

"V.I.N.O." (Vibe In Name Only) works for A.R.G.U.S. in a post-G.I. Joe world where everyone is a fit paramilitary badass with a full head of hair. Dale Gunn used to be a balding middle-aged Vietnam vet who was a surrogate father and all around Alfred Pennyworth to Steel (the white one.) Now he's a hard motherfucking spy with a goatee working for Amanda "Apple Bottom" Waller tasked with turning Vibe into a somebody. 1984's Paco Ramone was a gangbanging breakdancer with more attitude than sense who was tolerated more than liked. Now Francisco Ramone is a polite lad working at an electronics store to save for college who everyone believes is going to do great things. As best as I can tell, the creators are trying to redeem the Vibe name, as he was one of the first and remains one of the few Latino super-hero properties at a time when that's a voting block that can determine presidential elections. Their method of doing this is to whitewash Detroit and smooth out every rough edge, taking with it any semblance of personality. It doesn't appeal to folks who appreciated Vibe for his camp/transgressive value, and there's a desperate air to the effort of trying to make this kid matter on a grand scale, like every other time comics have tried to manufacture The Next Big Thing. It is impossible to like Cisco Ramone, because there's nothing there but a well-intentioned blank where a character should be.



John Carter: The Gods of Mars #1 (Marvel, 2012, $2.99)
The prospect of reviewing this book contributed to my hiatus from doing reviews. Wasn't it enough to just read the damned thing? This civil war guy travels to Mars through a dubious method and fight critters with a Martian dude he knew from another story. There's a scam being used to enslave Martian people, and somewhere in there Edgar Rice Burroughs gets inserted into his own story. I don't know or care whether this is an adaptation, but everything is uninspired, and Sam Humphries maintains his track record of writing shit I have no use for.


Sex #1 (Image, 2013, $2.99)
I definitely like Sex in general, but I'd rather have a lot of it all at once than an unsatisfying little taste that ends just about the time I finally feel like I'm getting a handle on it. I do have to say that the panels of sheared vulva do nothing but limit the potential audience and waste space (while, most importantly, not being the least bit arousing.) Joe Casey doesn't alienate me for once, and Piotr Kowalski's art has a cool Mazzuchelli covering Guido Crepax thing going on. Please stop it with the colored text highlighting though, which puts emphasis on words for no particular reason and make me read the character's dialogue like Christopher Walken talking to Bill Shatner.


Star Trek Countdown to Darkness #1 (IDW, 2013, $3.99)
Speaking of whom, this is like every other Star Trek comic, which is to say stiff and dull. Spock is still struggling with the shocking twist of the last movie... from 2009. Four years ago, this thing was a modest thrill, and I might have still had some enthusiasm in 2011, but I'm completely indifferent to it now. I haven't seen Abrams' flick since the theater, and didn't even bother to fish it out of the discount bin because it wasn't worth my standing in line to pay for it. This kind of thrill is best found cheaper and easier. For instance, there's oodles more decent-to-good Star Wars books that Trek ones. This is because Lucas' creation is science-fantasy; fairy tale comfort food melodrama filled with familiar themes and influences that are fun to draw and easy to write. Roddenberry's brainchild is cerebral; plot-driven science fiction with relatively static characters serving to observe and comment on situations analogous to real world concerns. At its best, Trek is The McLaughlin Group for dorks, but all that talky-talk bores artists and demands writing craft greater than the comic book industry seems capable of keeping down on the plantation. No matter how hard you try to bring sexy to Trek, its DNA won't allow for the fabulous swashbuckling trash Star Wars trades in. Stupid soap opera doesn't drape properly across a Federation issue uniform.



Star Wars #1 (Dark Horse, 2013, $2.99)
Continuing to segue, and speaking of the devil: Fly in space-- swoosh-- feelings over intercom-- mechanical breathing-- BAD GUYS--- DANGER-- watch yourself-- I'm HIT!-- nosedive-- KRSHH!-- double tap like a gangsta-- evil sorcerer-- dark knight-- conspiracy! C-3PO entertains the Ewoks and we all get down. It's silly shit coloring in the margins of a well worn mythology, but Brian Wood knows his way around it better than most, and Carlos D'anda keeps shit popping. Even Alex Ross, who I'm so very friggin' tired of after years of Dynamite dreck, hits just the right nostalgic uplifting note with his cover. Dark Horse seems hellbound on preemptively making Marvel look terrible before Disney even (inevitably) pulls their hard won and long toiled over license.


Threshold #1 (DC, 2013, $3.99)
The Hunger Games is an extremely popular franchise based in the subgenre of survival action/horror that's been quietly swelling for ages. Keith Giffen is an old man, so he processes that appeal through the prism of an earlier generation, The Running Man. Jediah Caul (a perfectly Schwarzeneggerian name) is a fugitive Green Lantern with trumped up charges against him, because Green Lanterns sell books and he first appeared in a backdoor pilot hosted in one of their annuals. He's stuck on the planet where criminals go to get hunted for bounty and televised sport, which is exactly what happens on a bunch of pages that wouldn't be much use to anyone if Tom Raney hadn't drawn them in that nifty way he has about him. Halfway through, I thought the "co-feature" had kicked in, but it was actually a couple of obscure DC sci-fi characters hijacking the narrative (abruptly, though not unwelcome.) Then the actual back-up story began, which was about Larfleeze, that Orange Lantern DC really thinks you like but let's see how the numbers on his upcoming spin-off shake out. I'm personally not a Scott Kolins booster, and it's Giffen being "funny" in that way he has when not having someone else do his dialogue, which is to say gratingly attitudinal in the street sense of the word. Yes it is too a word. Oh, fuck off why don't you? By the way, did Avatar allow its trademark to pass on their surprisingly long-lived T&Anthology because folks searching for DC cover images will be confronted with graphic depictions of pussy instead? Because that's a pretty sweet consequence, I must say.

G-Man: Learning To Fly (2009)

The earliest comic books were collections of comic strips. When a combination of rising licensing costs and decreasing supply of proven strips got in the way of an expanding industry, publishers started generating their own material. Male fantasy melodrama took hold in the comics, but humor strips remained popular on their own and worked as ballast between genre material. Shrinking page counts and the mainstream audience moving to television killed off most of the "funny" in comic books, though the editorial departments at the comic publishers occasionally offer revivals, often super-hero themed. I like funny comics, but most comics traffic in the lowest, most derivative comedy, so I can't name any instances where I've actually enjoyed those publisher strips.

Such was the case with "Mini-Marvels," created by Chris Giarrusso in 1999, and running in many fashions throughout Marvel Comics for about a decade. It was essentially "Marvel Babies," a lighter, kid-friendly, gag-heavy version of the Marvel Universe. Nothing wrong with that, and it was vastly superior to most of Marvel's prior attempts at in-house strips, but I was never bowled over by it. Giarrusso also produced a lot of stuff under Erik Larsen's shingle at Image Comics, including his own super-hero creation, G-Man. The strips mostly ran in issues of The Savage Dragon, and when "Mini-Marvels" wrapped, G-Man became Giarrusso's primary interest. Giarrusso produced a 36 page original story for a one-shot in 2004, then collected it with some of the Savage Dragon strips for the first volume of a trade paperback series. "Learning To Fly" was solicited at a time when I had become very disenchanted with the big two publishers. I liked some of the preview material, and I'd found a gem of a series of similar heritage in Adam Warren's Empowered, but for whatever reason did not pull the trigger on pre-ordering the trade. Over three years later, just ahead of the release of a third trade, I finally hopped on board. It appears I'll be hopping right off.

It's impossible not to notice how cobbled together "Learning To Fly" feels. The lead origin story works well, introducing a comic book random world where a pair of brothers arbitrarily gain super-powers and engage in schoolyard tiffs. It is immediately followed by the first in an entirely unnecessary cycle of strips called "Mean Brother/Idiot Brother." The amateur strip-within-a-strip shows the conflicting perspectives on incidents from the points of view of G-Man, our sympathetic hero, and his older sibling Great Man, who is essentially Reese from Malcolm in the Middle. There are only four of these things total, but they grate mightily. A large portion of the book pulls together short 1-to-3 page strips called "Comic Bits" that sometimes carry a narrative from one to another, but are still set up like a Sunday section building to a last panel punchline. A consequence is their being very episodic and arrhythmic when taken as a whole. An extended parallel universe serial ends the book, but not well, as it just sort of stops with a metatextual bow.

Empowered benefited from starting as a collection of daringly risqué shorts poking fun at the woes of making a living off fetish commissions, which built into an overarching commentary on women in the genre, until the lead character graduated into an entirely new longform story. It was a natural progression for its creator, and felt organic as a result. Warren is also a natural born world builder brimming with gratuitously imaginative contributions to the medium. By contrast, Chris Giarrusso's trade doesn't work as an album, as it cherry picks material from a wide variety of sources produced at different times that mostly travel from bit to bit with no greater objective. It is almost cynical in the way Giarrusso moves his "Mini-Marvels" shtick into the creator-owned arena without having a grasp for how to present his new characters. Despite there being dozens of supporting players, most speak in the same voice as G-Man and serve as his proxy or springboards, rather than having a life of their own. Similarly, most of their designs are basic and derivative, less archetypal than iconic in the manner of stick figures on signs meant to convey a very simple message. Wet floor, deer crossing, handicap only, super-speedster. Without the development time, characterizations and general expectations that come with preexisting characters, Giarrusso lacks a direction to go with his own creations. Hopefully, Giarrusso corrects these problems with later editions, but for now I find myself more interested in seeking out Jacob Chabot's Mighty Skullboy Army collections, as his frequent team-ups with G-Man were the highlight of the strips.

Ferals Collected Volume One (2012)

I've sampled David Lapham's writing on and off since buying the first issue of Stray Bullets when it came out, but I didn't pay serious attention to him until the first collection of Young Liars blew me away. That volume was amazing, but I somehow got sidetracked after starting the second, and haven't even cracked open the third. The comic industry seems to have the same problem with Lapham, because they kept putting him on books with potential and the best of intentions only to see them canceled left and right. I'm not interested in a Deadpool book no matter who writes it, and then there's that nonexistent trade paperback collecting the short-lived Sparta: USA I'm still waiting on. Moving to Avatar seems to have suited Lapham, as he's been one of their most consistent performers, and he even managed to out atrocity Garth Ennis on Crossed from what I hear. Still, no projects quite spoke to me, and Avatar's pricing structure was prohibitive when it came to sampling. Finally, Ferals was announced, and I have a lifelong love of good werewolf stories (despite "good" and "werewolf stories" rarely finding their way into the same sentence.) Twenty bucks seemed reasonable for six issues, plus my new comic distributor offered vastly more favorable discounts on Avatar product than my old one. I was sold.

Ferals is a good bad comic. This is a book that's all plot and circumstance, while characterization is nearly absent, and every single character is detestable. The good news is that the story has a very cinematic quality in the best sense, with a density of information that is demonstrated visually rather than stated literally. By comparison, most "cinematic" comics are more like music videos; brisk shallow reads with (hopefully) a few money moments. Each chapter is meaty in the action department, and I don't just mean the sex and gory violence, but also the distance traveled by the narrative with each step. There's a lot going on to keep up your interest, and when the volume ends abruptly with a plethora of unanswered questions, you're left yearning for more. On the other hand, there's a massive weight on Lapham to explain all this shit, because the scenery and cast changes so frequently, the unfolding developments are all that exists to hook readers. Not to be a spoiler, but most of the characters introduced in the story are dead by the end of this volume, and you're unlikely to care about any of them, because everyone exists purely to service the plot.

Avatar has something of a gonzo house style between Mike Wolfer, Jacen Burrows, and Juan Jose Ryp. Artist Gabriel Andrade is more reminiscent of high end Vertigo artists like Darick Robertson, with classic clear storytelling enhanced by stylish flourishes. It very much suits the tale, which requires a grounding in reality so that the grisly details and inhumanity of the wolf is affective in contrast. It's a great looking book, well served by glossy stock and sound coloring. The subject matter goes far enough over the top to be too much for more skittish readers, but not as graphically lurid as much of the more infamous Avatar fare. Lapham is building a werewolf mythology not quite like any seen before, and I'm willing to give this title the benefit of any doubt based on the quality introduction found in this initial collection.