“Let’s All Send Him Our Love.” COMICS! Sometimes I Suspect My Chakras Are Stunted.

Anthologies don’t sell! Yet people keep publishing them and I keep buying them. Here are some words about three anthologies I read this week. ABC WARRIORS (Langley, Mills & Parkhouse)

Anyway, this... 2000AD Prog 1966 Art by Mark Sexton, Richard Elson, Clint Langley, John Burns, Carlos Ezquerra Written by Michael Carroll, Dan Abnett, Pat Mills, Kek-W, John Wagner Coloured by Len O’Grady Lettered by Annie Parkhouse, Ellie De Ville, Simon Bowland Cover by Neil Roberts JUDGE DREDD created by Carlos Ezquerra & John Wagner KINGDOM created by Richard Elson & Dan Abnett ABC WARRIORS created by Kevin O’Neill, Brendan McCarthy, Mick McMahon & Pat Mills THE ORDER created by John Burns & Kek-W STRONTIUM DOG created by Carlos Ezquerra Rebellion, £2.55, weekly (2016) All contents © 2016 Rebellion A/S, unless specifically stated otherwise.

Hey, here’s a thing I just noticed about 2000AD: in the little box of publishing information which tells you who owns what and what they’ll do to you if you nick it (rub distressed foxes in your face), some wag has only gone and put something humorous in it. I don’t have a fetish for legal bumph but concealing larks in that part of a comic is not entirely unknown, so occasionally I check, and this time that nanosecond glance into the small print paid off. I don’t know if it’s a regular thing, but this time out, camouflaged by legalese, someone has used the space to update people on his/her opinion of that TV series with the bikers in. The one with Ron Perlman in. The one Jason Aaron fans probably call “searing” and “incisive” when they aren’t eating raw bacon and crying about their dad not hugging them enough. Whoever penned the micro-crit wasn’t too impressed with the surly biker show but we were already into some pretty entertaining stuff and the comic hadn’t even started. See, it’s always worth having a poke about, you never know what you might find. Unless of course you work with highly confidential information, in which case you’re probably as well just minding your own business. No one wants to end up in a field choked on a porn mag with a suspiciously curt suicide note pinned to their head now, do they? As usual Tharg says some stuff but I didn’t read it. So if he said owt about me mum, let me know and I’ll go round and give ‘im a thick ear. At the bottom of the page we are promised the return of Bill Savage – COME ON, TWINKLETOES! GET SOME! So, yes, looking forward to that. GET IN THERE! Stoked, one might say.

JUDGE DREDD (Sexton, Carroll, O'Grady & Parkhouse)

Oh, this one’s getting shakier as it goes on. Okay, we can go with a secret city-within-a-city of faux Judges, but stressing how hard-line they are (Hershey says they make normal Judges look like liberals – Whoof!) and then having them risk everything to rescue someone’s sister rings more than a little false. Additionally names are important in genre fiction and unfortunately naming the big bad “Badger” just makes me think of Brian May and I don’t really ever want to think about Brian May. Unless he’s being attacked by badgers. On the upside, however, Carroll does a really good job selling the idea that Dredd’s outclassed by his opponents on the cunning front, only to give him a sweet “You’re so sly, but so am I!” move to end the episode on. Sexton’s art remains detailed without becoming cluttered and is a definite asset to Carroll’s slightly listing script.  GOOD!

KINGDOM (Abnett, Elson & De Ville)

There’s not a lot to say about this because it isn’t really a story, Gene (our genetically modified hero) goes and tells everyone the bugs are coming, everyone listens, goes away and prepares and then the bugs come. That’s yer lot. There isn’t even a dude with anchors on his jacket telling Gene that it’s the Fourth of July so it’s probably best for everyone if the beaches stay open. No, they just go “okay”, and knuckle down for the big slobberknocker promised by the closing two page spread of the sea of insects about to break upon the walls of the compound. You can tell that’s a big moment because pages are precious in each and every Prog, so to splurge on a double page spread means you best sit up and listen. It’s not like your American comics with their splash page fetish and its ever diminishing returns (except for writers who get paid by the page). Oh, KINGDOM’s all right, but like I say it doesn’t feel like a story just a sequence of events. Which is fine, Abnett and Elson efficiently purvey low-attention, high-octane entertainment, but I don’t think I’ll ever feel the need to read a collected edition. For six or so pages it’s pleasant enough company. A bit like a short bus ride sat next to someone who neither stinks of ammonia nor yammers into a mobile like a deaf cretin. OKAY!

ABC WARRIORS (Langley, Mills & Parkhouse)

Pat Mills and Clint Langley once again, via the medium of violent robots, point at real world events and make Little Rascals Faces. Remember all those enquiries we had over here, particularly that phone hacking one which saw all those morally scrofulous people sent down and disgraced despite their connections to Rupert “Doomlord” Murdoch and David “The Ham Botherer” Cameron because The System works? No, neither does Pat Mills, but he remembers all those enquiries we had over here, particularly that phone hacking one which saw all those morally scrofulous people look a bit sheepish and embarrassed for a bit before basically taking up where they left off once everyone’s attention wandered back to The f****** Great British Bake-Off (“Terry’s sponge fingers tickle everyone’s fancy!”). Because: power protects power. Admittedly as messages go it’s all a bit rainy-day but Mills & Langley do part the clouds a bit to throw in a robot nurse with steel breasts (because men would, wouldn’t they?) and a psychotic robot yelling about “Big Jobs!” Langleys’ art might, alas, look like someone forgot to set up the printer properly but the fact ABC WARRIORS still bothers to pretend anyone cares about anything goes a long way towards healing that particular visual wound. Also, “Big Jobs!” will always make me laugh; simple pleasures for simple folk. And I am nothing if not simple. VERY GOOD! 

THE ORDER (Burns, Kek-W & De Ville)

Finally, The Order plays to its strengths which, John Burns’ lovely art aside, is the odd bloke tracking our dreary heroes.  The strip would be a lot better if this guy was the protagonist; he’s a bit like the autistic savant type so beloved of current televisual melodramas but less tiresomely winsome. The lesson here is that steam driven motorbikes and people anachronistically babbling in Code are okay, but character wins the day. OKAY!

STRONTIUM DOG (Wagner, Ezquerra & Bowland)

It’s easy to take Strontium Dog for granted given the apparent ease with which Ezquerra and Wagner pump it out. But then you see a panel where an alien seagull is snatching some snap from a dude with his face in his knee and the amiable weirdness of what is going on becomes glaringly apparent. I also like the fact that while Johnny is a presented as a Good Guy (which he mostly is) he’s also well dodgy and has no qualms taking advantage of the fact that the Galanthans can’t understand the concept of deceit. He’s not hurting anyone is he? Also, The Brain of Hoomonos looks like the end of term scrapings from the underside of a thousand ten year olds’ desks palm-rolled into a ball. Light comedy, endearing characters and nimbly imaginative shenanigans all add up to something that’s VERY GOOD!

JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #368 Art by Nick Percival, Paul Grist, Steve Yeowell, Ben Willsher Written by Michael Carroll, Paul Grist, Arthur Wyatt Coloured by Nick Percival, Phil Elliott, Chris Blythe Lettered by Annie Parkhouse, Paul Grist, Ellie De Ville, Simon Bowland Text features by Karl Stock, Matthew Badham Rebellion, £5.80, mothly (2016) All contents © 2016 Rebellion A/S, unless otherwise stated. Demon Nic © 2016 Paul Grist JUDGE DREDD created by Carlos Ezquerra & John Wagner DEMON NIC created by Paul Grist GALEN DEMARCO created by Carlos Ezquerra & John Wagner

JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE began in 1990 and is thus 2000AD’s much younger relative.  It comes out monthly rather than weekly, and has always seemed a bit extraneous to be honest; an impression not softened by the knowledge that it has often struggled to survive. At one dire point half the comic was taken up by PREACHER reprints, which was okay if you hadn’t already read PREACHER (or didn’t think PREACHER was an undisciplined mess). In 2016 those mend and make do days are long gone and it’s all original strips; well, except for quite a sizeable chunk of text stuff. I didn’t read the text stuff because I barely had time to read the comic, but it takes the form of interviews with the artists Mark Sexton and Darren Douglas, and the writer Si Spurrier. Although this is basically cheap content I am tentatively approving of it since I am old school, and I well recall having to actually make the effort to hunt down interviews with comic creators, and also the infrequency of such interviews. So if you have an interest in the work of Sexton (currently drawing Judge Dredd  - see above) or Douglas then there you go. Si Spurrier is more about shilling his new series from Image about werewolf lesbian soldiers or something. I’m sure it’s fine; he’s a decent writer from what I’ve seen. I do remain confused as to why he’s given space in the megazine to basically advertise another company’s product, but I’ll put that down to the British largesse of generosity (yes that famous largesse of ours) rather than the result of some weird quid pro quo. Mind you, if anyone is after some purely prose werewolf entertainment I’ll grant myself this opportunity to shill Toby Barlow’s SHARP TEETH (VERY GOOD!) and RED MOON (GOOD!) by Benjamin Percy. Two can play at that game, son.

JUDGE DREDD (Percival, Carroll & Parkhouse)

Aw, nertz. This is just EH! And me and Michael Carroll were doing so well, we were going to meet each other’s parents and maybe start looking for a small house together! But he’s put the kibosh on all that with this duffer. In this first disappointing instalment of a new Dredd thrill, Judge Dredd and Judge Joyce go to a floating shanty town populated by the crew from Bill Nighy’s ship in that movie based on a theme park ride.  The thing is though, right, because of science no technology can work in this place, The Gyre.  Ah, where to begin. Right, yeah, it’s okay making a point of mentioning that Judge Dredd’s bionic eyes will still work because they are “shielded” since a) I’m impressed anyone remembers he had his eyes poked out during City of The Damned and b) the guy has to see unless we’re in for a kind of ultra-violent fascistic riff on Norman Wisdom. So, ahuh, okay, the tech don’t work except for Dredd’s eyes  (which are “shielded”) but how come, how come right, even though their guns don’t work, and they knew going in that only Dredd’s “shielded” eyes would work, how come they didn’t just take some of those projectile weapons humanity has had such a boner for for, ooh, only a few thousand years? How come that?   There’s no microchips in a Desert Eagle, Judge Dredd! Or a bow and arrow, for that matter. And why, pray tell, isn’t Judge Joyce in proper uniform? He’s an Irish Judge so he should be in green and white with the Guinness harp on his helmet, and be perpetually concerned that they’re all after his luck charms, Bejaysus! (Hey, don’t look at me; Garth Ennis’ frequently regrettable sense of humour’s the culprit there.) Or whatever. But no, he’s depicted as just another Judge here, which seems odd. (I suppose he could have got a transfer I forgot about during my 8 years in the wilderness) Mind you Nick Percival’s art is also pretty odd from soup to nuts. He’s gone for that all painted approach which is usually used by weaker artists to plaster over any artistic deficiencies, a function it never achieved too convincingly. And so it is with Nick Percival. But, I can’t fault his colours; everything’s got an appropriately fish-gutty look, and it all certainly looks like it would stink like death would be a mercy if you were actually there. But everything under the colours is awkward with stilted poses, and such a lack of flow that the water based scenario just becomes cruelly ironic. Like the host of a shit party Percival saves the worst until last, with a full page splash of something apparently so daunting our Judges can only goggle. Unfortunately the page turn reveals Percival has drawn what appears to be a bunch of empty barges kind of milling about lethargically, which no matter how highly strung you are isn’t even interesting, never mind threatening.  It’s like he forgot to draw something very important (like a horde of angry fish men, or a rain of enraged monkfish; I don’t know what he forgot,  after all it’s pretty hard to guess what someone hasn’t drawn). Nothing about this strip is interesting except the fact that Carroll decides to lift the “mind your language” bit from DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, and by interesting I mean baffling. I mean, why? (Because that’s what being baffled sounds like.) It’s not a homage - Dredd isn’t mortally wounded and he isn’t chasing his “Joker” through a Tunnel of Love, he’s just running after some thug and gets a bit short on wind on board a crappy ship. I don’t know why the callback’s there really. This first episode is so poorly thought out, slackly paced and badly visualised it’s more DARK KNIGHT III: THE MASTER RACE than DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. I’m not a fan is what I’m getting at here. Step it up, guys.

DEMON NIC (Grist & Elliott)

DEMON NIC (someone explain that title to Brian Azzarello, his little face is all creased up!) is a creator owned series by Paul Grist, and this episode is the final episode in the current run. Now, I don’t really know how I find myself in the weird position of just chancing upon work by Paul Grist right as it ends because , seriously, I would certainly appreciate it if someone out there could keep me informed of Paul Grist’s doings from now on. Clearly, The Internet isn’t cutting it. It is forever telling me what people I have no interest in are doing (things I have no interest in reading, weirdly enough).  I’m not bothered if he’s doing DOCTOR WHO because Doctor Who is, er, well, look, I’m not fussed, okay. I’m allowed to not be bothered about DOCTOR WHO you know! Everything else Paul Grist gets up to? Would you mind awfully letting me know? Thanks, you are a dear. So, yeah, nothing worse than coming in on a series’ vinegar stroke but this seems to be a spooky actioner a la Hellboy but considerably more dense, amusing and generally playful in that droll way I like. Oh, and the art is spectacular. Usually I get a bit twitchy when the page is black rather than white (Avatar do that a lot) and I’ll be shaking like a shitting dog if the panel borders also go AWOL because you need to be pretty sweet at that whole art deal to be getting away with that. Here Grist just plops his chunkily robust cast onto pure black pages and guides the eye around via the miracle of being very bloody good at what he does. Just brilliant stuff. EXCELLENT!

DEMARCO, P.I. (Yeowell, Carroll & De Ville)

Ah, I’m beginning to see the problem; Michael Carroll is overstretched. Personally I avoid the work of any writer who regularly produces three or more US comics a month. I mean at that frequency we’re just talking mental effluvium at best; it’s not writing at that point it’s just words. Now, I don’t think Michael Carroll’s at that point yet, but then nor do I wish him to reach that point. This strip centres on Galen DeMarco a character introduced in the main Dredd strip who graduated to her own series. As a character I can’t say she she’s been terribly consistently written but then again last time I saw her she had a talking ape as a companion.  Said ape is notable by his absence so he probably died and we had a sad ape death scene which I missed, which is a shame as I am a sucker for sad ape death scenes. But enough about me! Here DeMarco is helping a bunch of Judges with some weird beast-robot things which might be connected to that TRIFECTA storyline? It’s not terribly clear. Anyway something breaks out and the size of the panels taken together with the  fact that the best last words two successive Judges can come up with at the point of death is a bare bones “No!” suggest Michael Carroll wasn’t going for the Nobel with this one. A harsher judge than I would declare it a bit of a page waster, but then I guess they wouldn’t find sufficient pleasure in Steve Yeowell’s lanky B&W stylings to raise it to OKAY!

DREDD (Willsher, Wyatt, Blythe & Bowland)

This is a Judge Dredd strip set in the cinematic universe of Judge Dredd. I don’t understand why that is because the cinematic universe of Judge Dredd is precisely one movie which wasn’t popular enough for a sequel. It was also a normalised version of Judge Dredd. It was okay and all; I enjoyed it. Thankfully it fed that Stallone fiasco into the woodchipper but it didn’t dethrone the original strip in my mind. It was a good movie, probably suffered from being released in such close proximity to the (similar but superior) THE RAID but, yeah, I enjoyed it. This strip seemed okay too, like if you wanted to read Judge Dredd but didn’t want to actually read proper Judge Dredd because, gee, it’s all a bit far-fetched. So in this one all the kit is more functional and the swears are normal and, me, I don’t find that as much fun. There’s a suspicion in my head that it might be repackaged at some point by IDW as it seems oriented to the American market in terms of pacing and storytelling. OKAY!

WUXTRY! Shrink-wrapped with this issue is a free magazine type Graphic Novel. This time out it’s Synnamon: Mecha Rising. I didn’t have time to read it but I do remember reading it back in the day, and for a strip about a leather jump suit lady burglar in the future it was OKAY! Undemanding entertainment slickly delivered. I think the important thing here is that you get a free magazine of reprints, and given 2000AD’s storied history chances are good that this will pay off more often than not.

DARK HORSE PRESENTS #18 Art by Craig Rousseau, Dennis Calero, Julius Gopez, Carla Speed McNeil, Marc Olivent, David Chelsea, Tim Hamilton Written by Rich Woodall, Dennis Calero, Shawn Aldridge, Carla Speed McNeil, Barbara Randall Kesel, David Chelsea, Paul Levitz Coloured by Lawrence Bassa, Jeremy Colwell, Jenn Manley Lee, David Chelsea Lettered by Rich Woodall, John J. Hill, Carla Speed McNeil, Adam O. Pruett, David Chelsea Spot Illustrations by Geoff Darrow Cover by Craig Rousseau & Lawrence Basso Kyyra: Alien Jungle Girl TM © 2016 Craig Rousseau and Rich Woodall The Suit TM©2016 Dennis Calero Last Act TM © 2016 Shawn Alridge Finder TM © 2016 Lightspeed Press Sundown Crossroads TM© 2016 Barbara Kesel Sandy and Mandy TM © 2016 David Chelsea Brooklyn Blood TM © Paul Levitz and Tim Hamilton Shaolin Cowboy and related characters TM © Geoff Darrow Dark Horse Comics, Inc., $4.99 (2016)

KYRRA: ALIEN JUNGLE GIRL (Rousseau, Woodall & Basso)

This is an absolutely gorgeous strip, done in a robustly fun style saturated in E-number colours, seemingly aimed at Young Adults which repositions Tarzan as a young girl and the setting as an alien planet. I’ve already read Tarzan and I’m neither Young nor an Adult so it left me pretty cold. The art by Rousseau is thoroughly charming though. It’s OKAY! but like a lot of comics today it’s pretty thin stuff once past the delightful art. Still, it’s nice that there’s a strip about a Cave Girl that’s not drawn by Frank Cho just so that men can fap over it and show those SJWs what’s what. Progress of a sort there. Baby steps, people. Baby steps.

THE SUIT: CONTRACT NEGOTIATION (Calero & Hill)

This is CRAP! This is the second run of this consistently poor series in DHP. I don’t know who asked for it back but when I find out they’ll get the sharp end of my tongue.  Every time this thing appears I just have no idea what I’m looking at on most of its pages, and when I do know what I’m looking at it’s some kind of unholy show involving photos of the two old blokes from TRADING PLACES and Don Draper. Not entirely sure if they are making love or fighting or what. Oh wait, there’s a ‘Nam flashback. Thank Christ for that. C'mon, Was everybody in America over in The ‘Nam or what? Did it not get crowded? I’m not saying ‘Nam flashbacks are overused but, yes, yes I am saying exactly that. Even my son talks about being in “The Shit” and getting back to “The World” and he’s 10 and has never been further than St Ives. And far be it from me to say that Calero is into photo referencing too heavily, but if it was cocaine we’d be calling for an intervention. Oh, mercy, mercy me (the ecology), this is just visual noise; a cacophony of blurry clip art. The passage of every poorly executed page makes Alex Maleev look more and more like Frank Robbins. I don’t want to be a big shitter here, but this should never have seen print. I just. I don’t. What. It’s. No. Just no.

LAST ACT (Gopez, Aldridge & Colwell)

It would be easy to take the Mick out of this overly earnest and somewhat overwrought attempt to graft some meaning onto the superhero trope, but since it was pretty refreshing to find anyone doing anything remotely interesting with the superhero trope I’ll let it off with an OKAY! Although it did not escape my irony detectors that this was basically a strip in which a superhero makes a man called John feel better by misrepresenting reality to him. Which is basically my childhood reading habits: redux.

FINDER: CHASE THE LADY (Speed McNeil & Lee)

Carla Speed McNeil is EXCELLENT! Everything Carla Speed McNeil does is EXCELLENT! Her horse radish soup is EXCELLENT! I know because I go through her bins at night, but respectfully and not in a creepy way. And guess what? Her bins are EXCELLENT! The fact that she enjoyed that movie with Keanu Reeves on a bus so much that she legally adopted its title into her name is EXCELLENT! It’s possible Carla Speed McNeil has done some things which weren’t EXCELLENT! but I’m not privy to them so they don’t exist. FINDER is EXCELLENT! Even though in chunks this small and separated by whole months, my aged brain is struggling to stitch them all together into a coherent narrative, I have every faith such a thing will come to pass, and so the very strength of faith I have in Carla Speed McNeil’s being EXCELLENT! is EXCELLENT! in and of itself. Even Carla Speed McNeil’s colours, a softly vibrant balm for the eyes, are EXCELLENT! And that’s from someone so thuggishly impervious to colour he still doesn’t understand why Sam Neill is so upset on that bus in IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS. And, no, Sam and Carla Speed are not related because Sam has an extra “l” in his surname, but had they been related I think we can all agree that that would have been EXCELLENT! Anyway, this was OKAY! Just joking, it was EXCELLENT! Oh my, what an EXCELLENT! joke.

SUNDOWN CROSSROADS (Olivent, Kesel & Pruett)

The best thing about this strip is that, well, I don’t know about you but sometimes I wake up in the night drenched in sweat worrying about whether we’re going to make it, you know, as a species. After reading SUNSET CROSSROADS I’ll probably sleep a little easier as it introduces the entirely new thought into the equation that maybe it’d be better for all concerned if we don’t. Ugh. This is some heroically twee balderdash right here.  I can make up the cover blurbs for the collection of this thing now: “With SUNSET CROSSROADS Barbara Kesel has vajazzled the soul of a generation!” - Kelly Sue DeConnick! “Something about dreams. Something about stories. SUNSET CROSSROADS is something something something.” - Neil Gaiman! The strip itself privileges us with a peek into the life of some kind of self-satisfied meringue brain wafting about her apartment, talking smug bunkum via a live podcast to people whose minds can only be little miracles of inanity. Now, my viscerally negative reaction could be due to envy as this conceited poltroon obviously makes a lot of money talking star-spangled claptrap and peddling her tat online since her apartment is bigger than my house. She doesn’t leave it either, that apartment; for the duration of the strip we are trapped inside with her and her incessant prattle; it’s like some terrible punishment. She only pauses when she spies outside what looks hilariously like Sean Philips on the street below. Sean’s minding his own business (probably getting some fresh air to clear his head before returning to the latest listless yet craft-fat script from Ed Brubaker) but our ethereal dream queen drags poor Sean into her nauseatingly precious monologue and he returns the favour by dragging her into her PC. Spooky stuff! I can tell the strip failed because my first thought as she disappeared into her monitor was “good”, not “ooh, I wonder what happens next.” I can probably live the rest of my life quite contentedly without knowing what happened to that frivolous void of a creature. Ugh. The best thing about the strip is the art, but even then in one panel the self-obsessed buffoon’s head is about four sizes too large for the body it bobbles above; which I can only hope is the artist having a cheeky laugh at the expense of the swell headed heroine. Basically, and I’m not sure if I made this clear, I’m probably not the audience for this one as I couldn’t give less of a shit about Steve Jobs and Subway makes me angry because if I wanted to make my own ****ing sandwich I’d have made my own ****ing sandwich! Basically, I am a bit of a throwback; you’d have to have your head further up the arse of the 21st Century than I’ll ever manage in order to appreciate this. That does, however, mean it is possible someone might not think SUNDOWN CROSSROADS is AWFUL!

SANDY AND MANDY (Chelsea)

If David Chelsea wants to put his elegantly precise Winsor McCay-isms to use in immaculately illustrating a sedately paced cascade of jokes which veer giddily from the hilarious to eye-rolling howlers then who shall say him nay? Not I, sir. Not I. VERY GOOD!

BROOKLYN BLOOD (Hamilton, Levitz & Pruett)

Brawklynn! BRAWK-LYNNN! People are super-proud of living in Brooklyn aren’t they? Well, people who live in BREWK-LARYNN! Seem to be. Doesn’t Jimmy “Spats” Palmiotti cahm frawm BRAHK-LAHYNNNA? I don’t know, but he should. I do know that BROKE-LIE-IN! is supposed to be one of those places that has mystique (not the naked blue lady) but all I can think of is the smell of fried onions, small boys in old men's caps selling papers on street corners and pigeon coops on rooftops. Is that BRAWK-LYNNN!? (I don’t care really. I’m just humouring them.) So, yes, BREWK-LYNNE is special, and so are you if you live there, but moving on…a lot of people criticise the American police and, you know, sometimes they have a point but, personally, I think the brunt of the blame should be borne by their Human Resources Department. I realise it’s not the sexiest of Police Departments but, still, there’s no excuse for such laxity. Who keeps signing off as fit for duty all these blackout drunks, PTSD sufferers, psychics, aliens and blind tap dancers who festoon their fictional ranks?  Yes, here we are again in the aisle marked “Damaged White Men With Guns” (next to the corn, above the beets), what’s not to love! This is the second (maybe; I don’t care enough to look) episode of this exciting new series which is exactly like every other cop series about a traumatised cop, but with “‘Nam” scratched out and “Iraqistaniraq” written above it. Despite there having been two murders most of the page time has been spent watching the mentally disordered white guy roll around in the street being distressed by phantom firefights. Which is okay, because murder’s pretty shabby but the real crime is how war fucks up white guys. Mind you, I am quite impressed with how clean American streets are; if you roll around in the ones near me you’d end up covered in dog poop and cig butts. Possibly the odd unlucky hedgehog. But then I don’t live in BRAWK-LYNNN! This strip is some bizarre stuff; the damaged white guy basically can’t walk down the street without hallucinating he’s in Call of Duty (but 4Realz!!) and his partner just dusts him off and puts him to bed. Go to sleep, tiny nutcase. The main draw here is the art by Tim Hamilton which has that generosity of ink I like and there’s also something fun happening with the colours; they get all luridly rhubarb purple and custardy yellow when there’s a catastrophic flashback, but I also like the subtlety in the bed scene where he dials it right back.  Maybe this strip is some kind of post-modern piss take of clichéd cop crap and every episode they’ll discover a body and the white cop will roll about and his not-white (obviously) partner will be all sensible, and it’ll just keep going like that with the bodies turning up in ever more ludicrous places and his mania taking on more and more extreme forms. By episode six they’ll be attending a murder in a clown school and he’ll be throwing poop at the local Shriners. In reality it’s probably just going to be more EH! but in BREWK-LYNN!

What am I giving up for Lent? I don’t know but it won’t be – COMICS!!!

Words With Friends: Jeff Talks About A Few Comics

I promised myself if I ever got caught up, I'd do one of these.  The last couple of podcasts, we've wrapped up with a one or two books that I'd read still left unmentioned.  Hmm, I thought to myself.  If only there was a way I could actually share my thoughts on these books without ceaselessly cutting off Graeme just as he was saying something sensible and well-reasoned.  Via some kind of...written medium, maybe... After the jump: the miracle of the written word!

MIND MGMT #1:  Did you pick this up?  It's an odd, paradoxical package: a $3.99 book without any real "hand" to it that is actually a full, satisfying read; a "by-the-numbers" plot that feels unique and idiosyncratic; art that straddles the line between off-putting and charming; a comic that all but screams "self-published labor of love" that comes with the Dark Horse stamp on it.

None of it should work.  Almost all of it works. And it works because the creator Matt Kindt is the kind of guy who has ambition to burn and mad formalist chops.  The best I can do to make my point is to point you to page 24 of the book, where the bottom six panels of the nine page grid are actually a single image just as the narrator explains the secret behind a psychic able to see the future by reading the minds of every living creature around him.  You literally see "the big picture" at the same time as the revelation, which lets you experience how the psychic's power works.

While I didn't put down the book with any especially strong desire to see what happens next in the story, I can't wait to see the next issue, to see what Kindt tries to pull off next, and to see if he can use those formalist skills to make me care about what's happening.  This is quite a GOOD book and worth your time.

MUD MAN #4:  Mud Man is one of those books I soooo dearly want to love.  Paul Grist is really working the Lee/Ditko vibe of Amazing Spider-Man, trying his damnedest to re-create that odd, off-kilter feeling of a teen superhero trying to get by without a rulebook to follow.  Rather than follow the beats laid down by Lee and Ditko (and copied by generations of comic book creators since), Grist is using his own rhythms and ideas and the limitations he's put on the title character.  There's a charming little essay on the inside cover about where the title should go in comic books, the last line of which is "Why Don't People Do Comics The Way I Want?" and it's pretty easy to see Mud Man as Grist doing the superhero comic he wants to read the way he wants.  I feel like he should be lifted on the shoulders of the comics industry for it.

And yet, once you strip away some of the smart and dynamic page layouts, the masterful use of white space, and the charmingly low-stakes action (this is our first supervillain, and he's a shirtless old guy),  the book doesn't really have that much different from it from what you'd see in, say, the Rogers/Giffen run of Blue Beetle: it's very much the "young hero gets a cool, enigmatic  mentor" turn with an additional four page action sequence that turns out to be a daydream.

I know, I know: that's a lot of amazing stuff to put away to one side, like I decided to complain about a cake with the opening argument of "putting aside the amazing frosting and the amazingly rich texture of the cake itself..."  But I think maybe there's some validity to not being satisfied with a chocolate cake without any chocolate in it.  In Mud Man, our hero makes a heroic choice to save the guy who bullies him in his secret identity, but he does it without any use of his superpowers.  (And the best, most exciting example of his power ends up utilized in the four page daydream sequence.)

Lee and Ditko did an amazing job of making Peter Parker an object of pathos, in both his secret and public identity.  But we also got to see Peter kick some ass in exactly the right proportion to all the superhero-deflating hijinks.  I know it makes me a bad reviewer to judge this book on what I want rather than what Grist intends, but just a dash more superheroing in this superhero book would make it so much more than the OKAY read it is to me.

PLANETOID #1:  Okay fine I admit it I am a stinking bourgeois pig who went out and got an iPhone 4S a few months ago when I came to the perfect intersection of necessity (we needed to change carriers) and culpability (as I recall, Apple had just opened Foxconn and their partner manufacturing plants to outside review) but you know what: don't tell me you couldn't give a shit about Siri because YOU ARE LYING.

I submit this sci-fi book by Ken Garing as Exhibit A, because no sooner than the protagonist crashes on a strange planet than he activates RICTER, his interactive analytical assistant.  Yeah, that's right, bitches:  our indy comic protag only makes it four pages before he decides he needs a faceless servile voice to catalog his inventory.

So don't tell me you don't dig the idea of holding up your phone and giving it some numbers to calculate a percentage of, or what time sunset is set for, or to send a message to your wife telling her you've managed to lock your keys inside the car for the third time this month and could she please come downtown with the spare set.  Because I've got HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Paul Bettany in all those Iron Man movies, and mother-fucking Ricter from mother-fucking Planetoid #1 to call you out on your shit.

As for the book itself, it's a very generous 32 pages for $2.99, and although it's about as by-the-numbers as you can get, it's lovely to look at and is scratching that new, weird sci-fi comic itch recently brought about by Prophet, Saga,  the first two years of Uncanny X-Force, and being able to buy issues of Matt Howarth's Those Annoying Post Bros. and Savage Henry for ninety-nine cents a pop over on Comixology.  It's an OK book, the kind of thing that could be entirely disregarded if just one of the factors (price point, talent, individual interest, use in dumb pop-culture arguments) wasn't met.  But they were so, yes, OKAY, indeed.

POPEYE #2:  Comes sooooo very close to being the absolute slice of licensed genius I want it to be: in fact, that Sappo story in the back by Langridge and Tom Neely is in fact something breathtakingly close to perfection.  In the way it takes an goofy premise and logically makes it goofier and goofier while keeping it grounded by its characters (or character types, really), it reminds me of a lot of what I loved most about Segar's work.

The Popeye story, however, doesn't work quite as well despite having a classic premise--Popeye has to compete against the dastardly movie star Willy Wormwood for Olive's affections.  All of the pieces are in place and each character is recognizable and in character--Olive is fickle, Popeye is a sensitive roughneck, Wimpy is a smooth conniver--but for some reason nothing really quite lands.  I don't know if the licensor had problems with the script, or Langridge didn't have time to finesse things  or what, but when you've got a potentially genius set-up as Wimpy playing Cyrano and feeding lines for Popeye to say to Olive and you get rid of that idea in a quarter of a page, something has gone screwy.

I know Langridge and Co. don't have the freedom to  play a comic bit out for as long as they want the way Segar did with his strip, but, unlike with the Sappo piece, the main story felt overly full and oddly static at the same time.

Thanks to the Sappo story, I'm giving this issue an overall GOOD rating, but I' d love to see it get even better next issue.  It's got more than enough potential to do so.

"It Is Not The FIRST TIME This Has Happened." COMICS! Sometimes They Are Hot Off The Griddle!

Hey old people, remember Sunday evening when you were a kid?:

Urrrrrhhhh! Let's take the Sunday Blues away with some piffle about our four colour floppy friends! COMICS!!!

SUPREME #64 Art by Erik Larsen & Cory Hamscher Written by Erik Larsen Coloured by Steve Oliff Lettered by Chris Eliopoulos Image Comics, $2.99 (2012) Supreme created by Rob Liefeld

Hu-ooFF! Well, that was horrible. As a comic, I mean. Look, I don't have a problem with a change in direction and it's a little soon to tell if I have a problem with this particular change in direction, but I have a problem with a bad comic which this was. Just page after page of people dying, things falling over, plenty of, as my son would say, "'splodin'!!!". I hate to break thi sto everyone but that's not actually a story as such. Sigh. I don't have much familiarity with Erik Larsen's work (the '90s? Not really my best time for comics)  so I'm not counting him out yet. Yeah, maybe Erik Larsen can swing this one around. I'll give him a couple more issues to do so. Turns out I'm that close to generous but this issue was pretty EH!

Reckon them's fightin' words and wanna show me just how wrong I am? Well, you can buy this exact comic from  HERE!

FURY MAX #1 Art by Goran Parlov Written by Garth Ennis Coloured by Lee Loughridge Lettering by Rob Steen Marvel,$3.99 (2012) Nick Fury created by Jack Kirby with Stan Lee

I don't know what they are feeding Garth Ennis on these days but the comics he's producing would be Type 3 or 4 on The Bristol Stool Scale; this being as we all know optimal. In a worrying state of affairs Ennis has now produced two comics (see last week's THE SHADOW) which are set in  convincing historical settings, peopled by satisfyingly sketched characters and which succeed in being both informative and entertaining. Which is why I had to bring my own shit joke to the party lest his regular, heh, audience feel at at a loss. Taking the first chapter's title from TheThe softened my hardened heart but going on to deliver an intelligent, amusing and diverting comic  is what really sealed the deal here.

Ennis is helped no end by the astonishing art of Goran Parlov. Goran Parlov is the kind of artistic wonder who can limit himself, largely, to the most banal of page layouts without inspiring new lows of tedium in my mind. He can do this because everything he puts in those panels is just right. It doesn't hurt that his present day Fury looks  so gnarled and battered he resembles 19th Century armoire smoking a cigar while clad in plaid slippers and a fluffy robe. Yeah, this was VERY GOOD!

(Yes, I am aware Nick Fury was created by Jack Kirby with Stan Lee and that I said I wasn't going to purchase any more Marvel products which failed to acknowledge the contributions of The King.  Either my LCS forgot or decided that my professed liking for Garth Ennis' non puerile work and Goran Parlov's anything superceded this. Okay? Either way I got a good comic and I still think it could have had the words "created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee" on it without upsetting the balance of Life itself.)

TRIO#1 Written and Drawn by John Byrne Coloured by Ronda Pattison Lettered by Robbie Robbins IDW, $3.99 (2012) Trio created by John Byrne

Mark the time. The super-hero funnybook is dead. I'm surprised to find John Byrne's DNA on the corpse but then it's always the ones that love hardest that end up hating enough to kill. I'm a bit sore because I lost my shirt on this one; my money was on one of the TV Breed. One of those guys who just keep parping it out until the comics cognoscenti just give in and allow quantity to supercede quality. Yeah, I figured the smoking gun would be in the clammy hands of  one of those guys with all the imagination of an empty cardboard box, one of the dialogue guys, one of the post-it notes and flow-chart guys, y'know, the sophisticated guys. But like the most surprising game of Comics Cluedo ever, in the end it was John Byrne in the LCS with The Fantastic Faux. A super team of characters called "One", "Two" and "Three" could only mean one thing; the death of imagination.

But look, in his defence, no one loved the super-hero funny book as much as John Byrne. He loved it so much he hid it away and protected it from reality. Up there in the big house with the pool. Pretending nothing had changed and if it had, well, it wouldn't last. See, John Byrne knows super hero comics are still big it's just the audience that got small. You just have to give 'em comics like back when they loved them. Back in the '80s. The magical hey-day of ALPHA FLIGHT! This isn't a comeback it's a return, it's the return of cape comics, the return of the way they should be done, the return of the way they were done when they were done right.  It's the return of an '80s issue of ALPHA FLIGHT. Sure, it's the best issue of '80s ALPHA FLIGHT ever published but it's still just an '80s issue of ALPHA FLIGHT. It's now 2012. Here's the corpse of super-hero comics now, caked in make-up, going on eighty trying to pass for eighteen. Nothing sadder. Sure, it may be EH! but they'll love it in Pomona.

You can prove the audience for this comic didn't leave twenty years ago by buying it from HERE!!!

FATALE #5 Art by Sean Phillips Written by Ed Brubaker Coloured by Dave Stewart Image Comics, $3.50 (2012) Fatale created by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

Well, I gave it 5 issues and I was hoping this one would turn it around. It didn't. A spooky rinser, people in hats swearing and a demon who can come back from the dead but can't bring back his eyes. I guess you could say it was a bit like James Ellroy meets H.P. Lovecraft, y'know, if they'd both had flu at the time, or you'd only seen the covers of their books, or you had in fact never actually read them just read about them. In the end FATALE pretty much ended up being the John Byrne's TRIO of independent creator-owned comics. Familiar stuff delivered familiarly; that's not going to make me run about like my underpants are on fire no matter who is involved. Sure, I'm all for Team Independent but not if they are as bland as the alternative. Being creator owned is a magical thing but for a reader comics still have to be better than EH!

Possibly not the most popular opinion regarding this comic book! Why not make up your own mind by purchasing if from HERE!

MUDMAN #3 Written and Drawn by Paul Grist Coloured by Bill Crabtree Image Comics, $3.50 (2012) Mudman created by Paul Grist

Wait! I'm getting a pulse! turns out the cape comic isn't dead after all, it just has to keep up with the times is all. This one's about a normal kid in a timelessly sleepy English seaside town who is, through events and stuff ,suddenly not normal in a way that involves mud and being a man made thereof. It's got a breezy lightness of tone that might work against it; sometimes it seems not a lot has happened but really quite a lot has. As Owen Craig (Mud Man when he's not Mud Man) finds his powers have opened up new possibilities for him physically the environment around him seems to change in concert. Using the fixed point of Owen's discoveries as the present Grist fills in the Past and hints at the Future while parts of each encroach on Owen's life and, as is generally the way of things, threaten it.

Grist is really good at keeping the tone light while at the same time giving the threats real weight.  He also excels at teasing about future developments; so much so that the next issue just can't get here quick enough. But what Grist is best at is storytelling; in the words and pictures sense, natch, this being a comical periodical and all. He may be a bit too good at it because reading the comic is so effortless, practically intuitive, that it's quite likely the reader might forget to credit the incredible talents and the deft wielding of same that made it so. From soup to nuts, from top to tail, from mud to man MUD MAN is VERY GOOD!

Or is it? Find out by buying it from HERE!!!

And we're done. If you're going to hang about don't forget to lock up and put the key back through the letterbox.

Have a good weekend and always remember COMICS!!!

Wait, What? Ep. 76: Dares, Wins

And Lo, There Shall Come...An Answering!

For most of you, anyway.  I fully confess Graeme and I did punt on a few questions that were either complex enough to take up a full podcast at a later date, or so good that it would require better men than us to answer it.  (Ah, yes: the old "It's not  you, Listener Question, it's us" strategy--never leave home without it.)

Anyway, as you might imagine with so many exceptional inquiries, it would take us a while to answer them--and of course us being us, we're going to go egregiously off-topic, right?--so, yeah.  Two hours and forty minutes is what we've got for you. We talk so long Graeme turns into The Lord of the Flies at the end, and if I was less tired, I could make some sort of joke about me having the conch/gronch William Golding/James Stokoe free association/condo association...but obviously I am far, far too tired.

So lemme just say:  we talk scheduling and artistic teams on DC; new 52 titles and teams we would like to see; The New 52: Threat or Menace?; Marvel movies and costumes in superhero movies; alternative sexual relationships in comics; 2000 AD and Shonen Jump Alpha; our favorite books of the 80s; a moment in Defenders #3 I totally blew past; J.M. DeMatteis' run on The Defenders; The Shadow, The Red Circle, Milestone and other commandeered characters; X-Men franchises vs. Teen Titans franchises; speculation over the changes in the Marvel dancecard; real world landmarks in imaginary worlds; our favorite Superman; Dr. Who; John Byrne's Fantastic Four; Rick Jones; Downton Abbey comics; the Shooterverse and, as you're probably used to by now, much, much more.

iTunes? Hopefully.  Here? Most definitely:

Wait, What? Ep. 76.1: Dares, Wins.

Thanks for your patience with us and, as always, we hope you enjoy!

Wait, What? Ep. 70: The Hour (Times 2.5)

Demolition Derby from Jon Pinnow on Vimeo.

The Pact still holds! Another week in 2012, another episode of Wait, What?

We are still experimenting with the done-in-one podcast (although many of you have used our comments thread to weigh in and say you like multiple eps. because it gave you something to look forward to...which I was worried might be the case but nobody articulated it before the change-up). I'm thinking I might get us back to two installments (or more) per ep. because something about it reminds me of the way Marvel U.K. used to chop up stories from U.S. Marvel comics and that sorta fits Graeme and I, in a way.

But, uh, it may be a while because there's something nice about only recording one intro, mixing one episode, etc., etc. So here is all two and half hours of Wait, What? Ep. 70, with the dauntless Graeme McMillan and the all-too-full-of-daunts me talking getting hacked, dreams about comics, Brubaker and Philips' Fatale, the Elseworlds 80 page giant, Chuck Dixon's G.I. Joe comic for IDW and Seal Team Six, Defenders #2, Action Comics #5, OMAC #5, Uncanny X-Men #4, New Teen Titans, Downton Abbey, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Avengers Annual, Freak Angels, Mud Man, Witch Doctor: The Resuscitation and King Cat Comics #72 by John Porcellino (the star of the short embedded above).

Sensible souls surely spotted said spirited show (on iTunes), but for hearty heroes hoping to hear happenings here (hear, hear!):

Wait, What? Ep. 70: The Hour (Times 2.5)

As always, we appreciate your patronage and thank you for listening!

"Now, Tanned, Rested, Ready And Fully Equipped With Brazilians..." Comics! Sometimes They Are Kind of New(ish)!

A couple of posts down from this rubbish there is a quite extraordinary thing occurring. People are discussing Digital comics and no one has been killed! It's a Christmas miracle, by Jove!

Why not go have a looksee, this rot isn't going anywhere. I read these comics. There was no force on earth strong enough to stop me.

BATWOMAN #3 By J.H. Williams III(a), J.H. Williams III/W. Haden Blackman(w),Dave Stewart(c) and Todd Klein(l) (DC Comics, $2.99)

It’s perfectly fine story wise but I can’t lie I probably wouldn't be reading it were it not for J H Williams III’s stellar performance on every page. I guess having art like this on something so meat and taters might seem a little like a bit of a waste, like having Einstein fix your toaster, but there’s two things I bear in mind when I read BATWOMAN: Thing the first is that J H Williams III is co-writing it so it’s not as if he’s been hoodwinked into this and so if he’s happy doing this and it looks this good I’m not going to carp and pule. It’s preferable to him wasting himself illustrating some other guy’s awesome movie-pitch-cum-graphic-novel about an ex-alcoholic shark that goes back in time to try and kill Pia Zadora’s chiropodist. In space. Thing the second is that there’s just something great about seeing someone talented do that talented thing even if you aren't that enamoured of the arena in which they express themselves. Boxing? No. Muhammad Ali? Oh, yes.

Also it’s totally neaty keen-o that the sapphism of the lead just results in exactly the same scenes between partners we used to get when everyone, everywhere was straight.  It’s an important lesson more people should heed: what you choose to do with your genitals doesn't make you any more interesting as a human being. Really, trust me on this. Particularly if you are considering telling me about what you like to do with your genitals. You would be amazed how many people think telling me about what they get up to with their genitals is an acceptable substitute for a personality. Even though it hardly keeps me awake at night with its narrative twists and turns Batwoman certainly amuses my eyes to the extent that I would call it VERY GOOD!

WONDER WOMAN #3 By Cliff Chiang(a), Brian Azzarello(w), Matthew Wilson(c) and Jared K. Fletcher(l) (DC Comics, $2.99)

Well, I guess we can all agree that among all Wonder Woman’s many powers the greatest of these must be her Divine Unflappability. I know if my Mother was standing there in public talking about her needs and how Zeus answered them by breaking upon her shores in  a great salty foam of satisfaction I’d be blushing like my cheeks were slapped and making a high keening noise like a fox with its paw in a trap. Not Wondy, she just goes and belts some husky lass and burns some corpses. I am greatly enjoying Azzarello’s writing here as it’s brisk, eventful and he’s reigning in his word games to good effect. Cliff Chiang is dreamy as well. Truth to tell he makes it such a smooth read I probably don’t actually appreciate the level of skill he’s applying. Also, while I did make mock of Hera’s randy reminiscence it was more in light of the effect on Wondy than the actual scene which is handled with taste and subtlety, which I guess goes to show that mature matters can be depicted without making your brain burn with shame for the people involved, y’know, if approached maturely. Who knew a Wonder Woman comic could be VERY GOOD!?

O.M.A.C #3 By Keith Giffen & Dan Didio (a/w), Scott Koblish(i), Hi-Fi(c) and Travis Lanham(l) (DC Comics, $2.99)

Okay, it’s true that Kevin Cho’s only personality trait is “befuddled”, his girlfriend is as accurate a portrait of 21^st Century womanhood as Dame Barbara Cartland (she spent “all morning cooking” in 2011? Really? I rather think not and I’m hardly Franky Feminist), there’s a hell of a lot more momentum than meaning and it feels almost indecent to be complementing Dan Didio on anything except turning a panicked line-wide shell game into a massive (length of term to be decided) success. But having said all that…having said all that…you get to see Keith Giffen enjoying himself in the only legal and publicly permissible manner he still has available, the microwave intensity of Hi-Fi’s colours still burns with the flare of The Future (so much so that I suspect that in 2024 there will be a sudden outbreak of people collapsing with great tumours blossoming from their eyesockets like fatal clouds. Every one of whom will be found to have read OMAC.), Max Lord not only has that Kirby Dapper Dan parting but he also smokes, there’s a character called Little Knipper and there is a man with Mind Powers who appears to have a salmon fillet draped over his head. Bearing all that in mind I think you have little option than to agree that it is game, set and match to OMAC, which by the way is still VERY GOOD!

AVENGERS 1959 #3 By Mister Howard Victor Chaykin (w/a), Jesus Arbutov(c) and Jared K. Fletcher(l) (Marvel Comics, $2.99)

Howard Victor Chaykin must have been told the sales figures for this series when he was halfway through the issue because he suddenly just seems to say "Aw, nertz to youse bums! Allayez!" and starts writing the story he obviously wanted to write in the first place. Since this story is basically Nick Fury in a Dr. No-era Bond Flick with a sly sideways dig at Howard Victor Chaykin's own CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN SERIES and is peppered with salty humour and ridiculously entertaining action I know I'm okay with that. Yet another issue of intriguing skullduggery set in a convincing simulacra of the '50s and containing all the man-tastic magic of the Master Of The Mai Tai his own bad self, Mister Howard Victor Chaykin. Who else could quote both Papa Hemingway and Dezi Arnaz, from I love Lucy, on the same page? Exactly! No, no one is buying it but that doesn't stop it being VERY GOOD!

MUDMAN #1 By Paul Grist(w/a) and Bill Crabtree(c) (Image Comics, $3.50)

Now this? This is some fine comics. Mister Paul Grist bringing it big style. He’s got a thing he does and he’s doing that thing here which is good because it’s a good thing Mister Paul Grist does. Alex Toth once wrote a blurb commending Paul Grist’s work. Alex Toth. Grist’s clearly influenced by Toth at the very least to the extent that his pages are very design orientated and the contents of said pages contain the minimal amount of ink in order to achieve the maximal amount of information. Grist mixes in a good dose of Kirby chunkiness into his Toth which makes the result a lot lighter and boppier than the sometimes airless Toth and of course the Toth grounds it more in reality than Kirby’s work could manage. That could all be horseshit as I have no idea what I’m on about but I am pretty sure Grist is like Toth in at least one respect: all the thinking’s been done before he puts the first line on the page. And every page here is a joy either as a pure comic experience or as an example of pure comic craft.

Mudman is a new series so anyone intimidated by the continuity of JACK STAFF (which included nods to continuity in old English comics even I’ve barely any acquaintance with. Lion? Victor? You could totally enjoy JACK STAFF without getting any of it BTW, it’s right gradley, tha knows. This interruption is too long to go in brackets but I’m sure no one will notice) should put their fears to one side. It’s a totally new start given the impression of some kind of back-story weight thanks to Grist’s penchant for temporal narrative zig zagging. It’s fun, funny and the execution is funnybooks in excelsis. If you aren’t reading MUDMAN you must be mad, man! (in my imagination we all clubbed together and promised Brian Hibbs that we’d get him a SavCrit cover blurb for Christmas. That’s my attempt. Cheers!) So, yeah, MUDMAN#1 is VERY GOOD!

SCALPED #54 By R.M. Guera(a), Jason Aaron(w), Giulia Brusco(c) and Sal Cipriano(l) (Vertigo/DC Comics, $2.99)

Although this series barely manages to avoid crumpling under the sheer weight of its genre clichés and the author’s ‘70s movie memories it remains a decently entertaining read. Some of this is due to the author who manages to pull the rug out from under you often enough that you’re never entirely complacent. Most of it is the storytelling which, yes, I guess Jason Aaron has a hand in but let’s face facts R.M. Guera’s got his whole arm in it up to his elbow. R. M. Guera is astonishing. I won’t go on about it but let’s just say that, for example, R. M. Guera knows that there’s a difference between visually basing one of your characters on Warren Oates and straight up tracing pictures of Warren Oates. The former is an act of skill and the latter lazy pish. R. M. Guera doesn't do lazy pish. When SCALPED ends with issue 60 I look forward to seeing genre comics take full advantage of Guera’s inventive and invigorating skills by assigning him to a Wolverine comic. SCALPED is VERY GOOD! but R.M. Guera is EXCELLENT! And I don’t tell him that enough so I did it here in front of y’all because I am not ashamed of my love. My love is beautiful!

THE GOON #36 By Eric Powell(w/a) and Dave Stewart(c) (Dark Horse, $3.50)

Hey, I laughed a couple of times, longest and hardest at the vagina joke. Oh, yes that’s the level we’re operating on with this one. And that’s okay. Like I said I laughed a couple of times at the story inside but I laughed most at the interview with Roxi DLite where the bounteous burlesque babe is at great pains to stress that burlesque isn't “just stripping in vintage lingerie”. It certainly isn’t! And those men in the front row with their hands kneading their groins like they’re digging for gold are “applauding”. Hey, whatever you want to tell yourself, people. Whatever it takes. A word of advice to the erotically adventurous: before you go to town on the centrespread of Roxi Dlite – take out the staples first. Casualty Departments are busy enough as it is, guys.

THE INFINITE VACATION #3 By Christian Ward(a/w) and Nick Spencer(w) with design stuff by Kendall Bruns and Tim Daniels (Image, $3.50)

I’m not Sally Scientist but reading the exposition in this I can’t help thinking that somewhere along the way someone confused science with semantics. Still, even on that basis it’s still quite fun, I mean I’m all for messing about with words, so, okay. I’m less keen on the sudden immersion in full on sordid torture of the sensationalistic stripe. I mean, really INFINITE VACATION #3, you spend all that time and skill using words, pictures and even design in a pretty entertaining use of the comics form and then just expect me to be slack jawed with awe because you've seen Hostel. Nope, you could have been something, INFINITE VACATION #3 but you let us all down with your antics, and you let down no one more than yourself. Go to your room and think about how you are just OKAY!

THE MIGHTY THOR #5 By Olivier Coipel/Khoi Pham(a), Matt Fraction(w), Laura Martin(c) and Joe Sabino(l) (Marvel Comics, $3.99)

This comic contains a preview of NEW AVENGERS. This is important because you may wonder why this comic which is usually EH! Is now AWFUL! despite it being exactly the same level of vacuous failure as every previous issue. It’s that NEW AVENGERS effect in full effect! I could go through this comic and tell you why it is so dispiriting an experience but no one cares least of all, for all their tiresome whining, the victimised creators so just take my word for it and save yourself $3.99 because MIGHTY THOR#5 is AWFUL!

Despite being broken and bad MIGHTY THOR did remind me of something on TV. Do you have those Adopt-A-Sad-Donkey commercials over there? Because MIGHTY THOR and NEW AVENGERS seem to be indicating that Comics are headed in that direction. So about March or so next year you can expect your episode of Chowder  to be interrupted by footage of some guy in a fluffy jumper strolling soulfully around a Mall while John Hurt’s smoky tones cough up the following:

“This is “Dave”. “Dave” wants nice things but tragically the world won’t just throw them at him. Times are hard for everyone and “Dave” has to earn a living. “Dave used to be able to write. You may fondly remember some of the things he wrote. “Dave” is quite happy to trade on this nostalgic fondness if you’ll just send him some money. Sadly “Dave” is old now, in his thirties, and his best days are behind him. If enough of you pledge just $3.99 a month “Dave” will receive the sales figures he so desperately needs in order to feel validated, sales figures that will result in a contract enabling him to eat brand name burgers and fart around flea markets with other needy creators looking for Female Prison films on Betamax while taking pictures of each other on Hi-tech gadgets. For just $3.99 a month “Dave” will send you a Tweet at least once a week. When he has a new comic out “Dave” will Tweet you hourly. When “Dave’s” comic gets optioned it may even require the intervention of a Law Enforcement Agency in order to stop “Dave” Tweeting you. If you pledge $5.99 a month “Dave” will reveal unfortunate intimate facts about himself and which Sham 69 b-side he was listening to when he wrote his grocery list. The comic? Oh, you don’t need to read the comic. The comic will be awful. This isn't the ‘70s, granddad, the actual comic isn't important. What is important is that “Dave” mentions all your favourite TV Shows in interviews and explains things really s-l-ow-l-y to you in the form of references to children's fantasy films from the '70s and so he must Love you and, if you send him $3.99 a month, “Dave” will ensure it will be like having the Best Friend in the World and all his successes will be your successes and all his money will be your money. So this Christmas give “Dave” the gift he needs most – money. And also unquestioning loyalty.”

And like the concept of “modesty” – I’m GONE!

Have a dandy weekend, all!

Wait, What? Ep. 64.1: Can Stop, Will Stop.

Oh, Thanksgiving weekend! What a boon you are to some, and a curse to others. I know I am extra-happy with the time off from work, but it also means Graeme and I won't be recording this week.

And it also means there didn't seem to be much point to breaking this episode in half since so many will be away from their computers on Thursday and instead dealing with the complex mash of family, friends and strangers. (I'll spare you details about my upcoming Thanksgiving but I realize I'm being way more morose about it than everybody else.)

The point is, we are giving you a big ol' 110 minute Waitstravaganza, with Graeme and I talking Community and Parks and Recreation; fights on Twitter (and more specifically Graeme's recent dust-up there); Avengers #19 and the brilliance of Daniel Acuna (sorry, I don't know how to put that little tilde over the n there), the mini-comics Cindy & Biscuit by Dan White, Sabertooth Vampire by Mark Russell, and The End of the Fucking World by Charles Forsman.

Think that's everything? Nope! We also talk up Mud Man by Paul Grist; Batman and Robin; Wonder Woman #3; Jim Shooter; fractal comedy; and much, much, much, much more. Our hope is it will give you something to listen to while standing in line for Black Friday events! (Or having to work the night before to prep for them!) Or, you know, as a way to cope with the lack of a holiday that combines bird meat and endless televised sports.

Wait, What? Ep. 64 is a thing you can find on iTunes. But, also! It is here (though why our plug-in player doesn't really seem to work any more, I 'm a little baffled by) and we invite you to share in the holiday cheer, cranberry sauce optional:

Wait, What? Ep. 64.1: Can Stop, Will Stop

We hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend and, as always, thanks for listening!

A Perfect Holiday: Jeff Pulls a Bait & Linkdump.

Ooo, so far behind. On my comics reading, on my comics Internet reading, on my writing, you name it.

But! I did think I'd pass along two links that made my morning a little merrier.

They're behind the link, just because the images might be big enough to screw up the template...

I'm sure you already know--and have known since February--that Paul Grist has been serializing his Eternal Warrior comic online. I found out about over the weekend thanks to an old post on Shane Oakley's blog. There's about 28 pages there, which puts some meat on its bones, and it's fun looking at Grist take Moorcock ideas and Barry Windsor-Smith visuals and make them his own. And, of course, his compositional sense in black and white just always kinda knocks me back.

I'm not a torrenter in any sense of the word, which is why I'm always grateful when someone gets something like this out into the open air of the Web for however long: you can find a file containing pages from the first two issues of the infamous Air Pirates underground comics here. Yes, there's some Disney characters screwing, but I've been in awe of both Dan O'Neill and Bobby London forever and watching them (and Gary Hallgren! whose name was not on my radar at all) tear shit up was 100% delightful for me. I'm sure it's just my grumpy old man trick knee/fake nostalgia acting up, but this stuff seems to me 100% more loving and reverent of Disney material than the cookie-cutter corporate approved imagery we see nowadays. Maybe that's why some of the layouts right out of Krazy Kat fit in so well: The Air Pirates were tossing bricks, for sure, but they thrown with love. I'm incredibly grateful to Alan over at Poor Mojo's Newswire for bringing the link to my attention.