I recently read Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece 62, which means that I’ve read over 12400 pages of this series, far more than anything but maybe Amazing Spider-Man, which I’ve read almost front to back, barring an extended break when it went sour in 1996. But yeah: 12400 pages, minimum. It’s as good as it ever was. It’s not at the emotional heights of Water 7 (I called it “a complete and utter emotional apocalypse” a while back, and I stand by that), but it’s still plenty enjoyable and better than most books.

Here’s a couple pages from it that I like a lot:

Oda does that thing at the top of page two a few times throughout the series, and it never fails to slay me. Someone starts to explain something related to the plot or science and Luffy listens, nods, and goes “Ah hah! So it’s a mysterious _______!” It emphasizes how dumb he is, but it’s also a good joke. He doesn’t have to know how things work, because he’s just going to barrel his way through anyway.

I dunno a lot about Japanese pop culture. Actual pop culture, I mean, not just manga or anime or movies. Maybe this “Ah, a mysterious _____” is a reference to a Japanese comedy show, or the “That’s what she said!” of Japan. But this gag works for me in a way a lot of equally dumb jokes normally wouldn’t.

Part of it is Oda’s cartooning. The contented smile, lazily closed eyes, mugs of tea, and body language elevate the dumb joke. I don’t even know that I can really articulate why I find this so funny. It’s like–you get it or you don’t. The earnestness, which is mirrored on the preceding page by Luffy aggressively wondering about the conditions required to sail underwater and then immediately pretending like he knows what “salinity” means, is crucial. (One day I’ll write a really salinity post.) Nami’s the eternal straight man for the antics of the rest of the crew, even Nico Robin, and is alternately horrified and exasperated with the rest of the crew.

I never get tired of watching her bounce off the rest of the crew, in part because Oda has created clearly-defined characters with their own comedic hooks. Luffy is endearingly stupid, Chopper is unbelievably naive, Sanji is Pepe LePew, Zolo gets lost, Nico Robin is morbid, Franky is strange and really into building fancy things, Usopp is a coward, and Brook is a pervert. Once you start combining the cast and creating combinations, you’re looking at differing types of humor. Zolo and Sanji are aggressively and absurdly competitive. Robin has no time for Franky’s strange antics. There’s a great bit in the “Thriller Bark” arc where Franky comes up with a combining robot (think Voltron with humans) for the crew to pilot. Robin refuses because it would be undignified, which pisses off the giant they were fighting, who thought the finished product would look really cool.

There isn’t endless potential here, but there are so many different hooks and combinations that no type of joke overstays its welcome, so each joke comes off fresh and funny.

Someone on Twitter, I forget who (sorry), posted a link to “Shit White Girls Say… to Black Girls,”, and this video had me laughing hard at work.

With a few exceptions (“Jews were slaves, too” & “My grandma hates collards” mainly, ’cause what kind of monster hates greens?), I’ve heard all of this, despite not being a black girl. This is one of those “So funny it’s true!” videos, and its jokes have plenty of bite. I keep my hair super short in part because some white people LOVE to touch black hair, like it’s catnip or magical or something. (It isn’t. It’s just black. And mine.) If I say no, you can’t touch my hair, then that’s… I don’t even know, playing hard to get? “Your mouth says no but your hair says YES YES YES TOUCH ME TOUCH ME?” And I mean, I’m a grown man with a good aight job who’s self-sufficient, and people still pull that. I had a mohawk for a couple months in late 2011 (word to travis bickle) and it still happened. C’mon, son. It’s always so awkward, too, because nobody means nothing by it but it’s enraging and then you’re taking things too seriously and you gotta loosen up, your hair’s cute, i just wanna touch it and–

Don’t even get me started on afro-fetishism (it’s not that cool of a hairstyle, y’all, especially after you put your hands in it) or calling black folks some variety of chocolate or other brown foods as a romantic thing. Really? Are you twelve?

This chick saying “______ is soooo ghetto” and “Hollerrrrr” had me in stitches. It’s a dead on impersonation, and the ghetto one is a particular pet peeve of mine. It’s pretty screwed up, if you think about how that word is used and the perception of who is in the ghetto.

I tripped over a reference to the video for El-P’s “Time Won’t Tell” off his Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3, directed by Shan Nicholson, by accident the other day and thought to myself, “Oh, it’s my favorite video from last year.” I don’t know when I decided that, or if I’d ever been consciously aware of that fact before now, but it’s true. I watch a lot of music videos, and this is the one this year that grabbed me the most.

Part of it is El-P’s production. El is easily the best at making sinister sounding tracks. A lot of classic songs sound like impending violence, like somebody’s about to get his whole head bust outside of the club. El-P makes joints that sound like the beginning of Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia or the cityscapes from Blade Runner or Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira look. They sound like impending doom on a level far beyond DMX barking in your ear about how you didn’t ride, so you must wanna die arf arf arf.

It’s the way the bass pulses and buzzes under the track, and just how dirty and dusty everything sounds. It sounds processed, but like it was fed through a meat grinder, not Pro Tools. The drums are messy, there’s a throbbing horn infesting the middle part of the track, and a wail that hints at something horrible. And then, at 2:10, the track takes a breath and comes back majestic.

Nicholson’s direction clinches the deal, though. The beginning is a tour, as we follow this kid around town and check out foreclosed homes, decrepit section 8 homes, the presence of authority figures as something to fear, and generally just life in the projects. It feels lonely, because this kid never interacts with anyone and looks uncomfortable around the people he does run into. The long shots of him walking alone push that loneliness even further, begging you to extrapolate a little.

He walks past four kids who then follow him around town and the suspense kicks up. The first thought to come to mind was one of danger, of kids who goose step over innocence. He grabs the mattress, the kids follow, and you know something bad is going to happen. And then it doesn’t, it’s just some kids playing together and having a good time. The first kid has something dope and the other kids appreciate it.

And jeez, man, I can relate. Boy, can I relate. We’re trained to think of other humans as possible threats. You stand real close to the ATM, you ignore strangers in public, you don’t wear short skirts, you practice defensive driving, you don’t make eye contact in the street, you get told to stay away from that white girl, you wonder if that guy is really talking about monkeys or if he’s just dog-whistling, you push forward on the sidewalk with your head down and dare people to not get out of your way, you sign a pre-nup when you get married, and your heart skips a beat when you hear footsteps behind you on a dark night, all because “what if something happened???”

I know what it’s like to be a lonely, skinny black kid. I went to two elementary schools, four middle schools, and three high schools. The longest time I spent in one house after elementary school was my last two years of high school. I’ve been the new guy, the guy who doesn’t get to hang because he wasn’t there when the group formed. I’ve been the guy who didn’t want the new guy in the crew.

But sometimes you connect to other people off the back of stupid things like comic books or music or jumping on a mattress out where the factories used to be and just vibe and things are wonderful. I remember as a kid, there was this big mound of red clay that the neighborhood boys would use as a bike ramp. I never did it–the thought of going in the air on my bike terrified me, and I’d had a bad bike wreck shortly after moving in–but we would hang out and that would be our sun. I have other memories–the woods between our school and our hood or the filthy creek near the dumpster where we found a gang of playboys or the youth center on base–where the “we” involved is different every time.

It’s nice when people actually connect with each other, no matter the catalyst. This video is as good a depiction of what it looks and feels and sounds like to let other people in as you’ll ever see.

Hey, everybody! It’s another week… of panels!

I got Space Jawa and Was Taters helping me out this week. David Brothers is still on his sabbatical. I miss him. Luckily, I have a plan to bring him back. See, I’m going to become the NEW David Brothers. I’m going to start writing about race in comics and 100 Bullets and hip-hop and I’m going to refrain from using the shift key when I write the titles to my articles. But then I’m going to go out of control and start writing those articles while wearing armor with spikes on it and becoming increasingly brutal to the point that the real David Brothers has no choice BUT to come back and teach me a lesson!

Or I can… you know… write my usual crap.

Before I forget, that Linkara dude did a review of Marville #1, which suggested checking out the Marville Horror series that guest writer Syrg did a while back. That was really cool of him.

Action Comics #5
Grant Morrison, Andy Kubert, Sholly Fisch and ChrisCross

Animal Man #5
Jeff Lemire, Travel Foreman and Steve Pugh

Read the rest of this entry �

This week Marvel released Avengers Annual #1 by Brian Michael Bendis and Gabriele Dell’otto. It’s the long-awaited follow-up to New Avengers Annual #1 from several months ago, which featured Wonder Man’s Revengers beating the stuffing out of the New Avengers and trashing the mansion. The new issue reads almost like a Garth Ennis anti-superhero story where he somehow reins in the sodomy and bad language. Despite his extreme actions, there’s little reason not to root for Wonder Man. He brings up good points about why the Avengers may not be worth having around and their rebuttal is never anything more than, “My God, Simon’s gone insane!” or “Are you being mind-controlled?” or “Please, Simon! You need help! Would punching you in the face help? I’m going to punch you in the face. It might help.”

The Avengers naturally win and the final scene shows that Wonder Man’s reasoning for wanting the Avengers disbanded goes deeper than originally thought. Before that, after the other Revengers are taken down, one of the Avengers wonders aloud why they did this. Bendis had his own spin on it, having them express feelings of revenge, atonement, insanity and — in Anti-Venom’s case — full agreement in Wonder Man’s mantra. Me? I think Bendis was as off the mark as he is whenever he writes any scene with Marvel Boy in it.

Okay, that might have been a little harsh. It’s not that bad. Still, I think I can shed some better light.

Read the rest of this entry �

Hey, it’s the first 4L post of 2012, as if that means anything! Since it’s the first of the year, I might as well go over the gist of what ThWiP is all about. Every week, me and some other guys (and you too if you’re ever up for it) take all the new comics we’ve read and sum it up in one panel. Nothing too spoilery, but something that does its best to advertise the comic and what it’s all about in one glance. It could be a hero and a villain running at each other. It could be a pretty funny line relating to the overall situation. It could be an info dump of blatant exposition. Whatever.

This week I’m joined by Space Jawa and Was Taters. David’s still on his vacation and with Esther not having posted in over a month, I appear to be running 4thletter solo. I should really do something with that, like get rid of these goddamn manga headers. I’d totally put some kickass Dr. McNinja panel in there or something with the Juggernaut, but damn if I know how to even work this site. Blast.

For this entry, we have a lot of Captain America comics.

All-Star Western #4
Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Moritat and Phil Winslade

Annihilators: Earthfall #4
Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and Tan Eng Huat

Read the rest of this entry �