"'Fear Itself'? More like 'Fuck Yourself'!" (wokka-wokka-wokka)

Hey, look, reviews!  

STAR TREK/LSH #1: Awwwwww.... I really really wanted to like this more than I actually did. The idea of a "Mirror/Mirror"-ed LSH 31st century is a cute one, but at the end of issue #1, the two groups aren't even together yet! I'd have preferred that the cause of things was much clearer than it was -- like an episode of the show. Ah well, I still have incredibly high hopes for the next one. EH.

WALKING DEAD: THE RISE OF THE GOVERNOR HC: Sadly, as a piece of prose, I thought this kind of stank -- it's told in an odd voice (my English classes are decades behind me, is "They do this, they do that".... third person, present, is it? Awful awful choice in any case), and it relies way way too much on a last-minute twist that really doesn't make a lot of sense for what we see in the comic. It spends far too much of its length in stuff I really didn't care about (maybe the last 30 pages are in Woodsbury, making this kinda more "the road to the rise of the Governor", and, again, that "twist", ugh, cheaty-mccheaterpants.

As a marketing exercise, I understand this even less, as it is a tie-in to the COMIC BOOK (The TV show can't have the Governor until at least season 3, if that), yet the cover design just screams "TV show" in aesthetic. Yet anyone watching the show would likely be baffled by this novel, since there's not a single character they know in it. At the least, you'd expect that maybe there'd be a page of "now read the comics for more" or something. But, there's not -- Ugh!

Also: I couldn't really hear Kirkman's voice anywhere here. I rather get the feeling that he just plotted it, or something.

Sorry to say, this was pretty AWFUL.

FEAR ITSELF #7: Um, wow. this has not exactly been a stellar comic all the way along, but I think this issue is a special kind of low. Virtually nothing made sense to me (like WHY is Thor dead? I don't get it?), and it suffers greatly from the Lord of the Rings movie problem, where there's just epilogue after epilogue after epilogue, all designed to funnel you into other comic books. It also doesn't help there also was a brand new 12-issue (!) mini (the Fearless) spinning out the same day, nor that there also seems to be a new branding trade dress ("Shattered Heroes"), or, that they seemingly forgot about a few characters along the way (please see Graeme's AMAZING missing scene from the issue), or that they have the temerity to extend the mini by three more "issues" (7.1, 7.2, and 7.3? OY!), or that we're already ramping up for the next set of events and crossovers ("point one" ships in like 3 weeks), and it's all just too much.

It's a big giant "fuck you" to all of Marvel's readers.

The biggest sin, of course, is that it is just plain dull -- but the calculatedness on top of that? Fuck Marvel here, is what I say -- this was AWFUL.

WOLVERINE #17: I thought the "Schism" stuff was all kind of mediocre, generally, but at least it had a point and a purpose.

I go kind of crazy sometimes, when I read comics set in San Francisco, that gets basic stuff about The City 100% completely wrong. Like look at this cover:

There's no possible place in San Francisco this should could be from (remember, SF is surrounded on three sides by water -- the only place it isn't is SOUTH, so, no, you can't "walk off into the sunset"), and even putting that aside, well, I can find 8 different "no, not in SF things" here -- seriously, gang, I'm available cheap as a San Francisco fact checker!

This story here is fairly throw away, but I have to give it one big ups -- it has my new favorite line of dialogue of 2011.

So there's like a bunch of reporters standing around a crime scene, shouting questions at the harried detectives, just like what you've seen in a hundred movies, but has never happened in real life, and one shouts out something very close to:

"Captain, Captain, can you confirm that this murder puts kung-fu related deaths up by 200%?"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The only rational response to a question like that would probably be "Yes, they're now at 200% of ZERO, dumbass", but this is comics, so that actually rules, and I'm going to give it a capricious-ass GOOD just for that line that made me giggle like a little school girl.

And, with that, I bid you anon, until next week...

As always, what did YOU think?

-B