ONE HUNDRED FIFTY! I need to get out more. This seems like as good a time as any to go over the mission statement:

This Week in Panels (ThWiP) is about taking every new comic my posse and I have read this week and sawing it down to its essence. If this was a commercial that was all, “This week in Age of Apocalypse!” this is the kind of thing you’d see. No final page images. No gigantic spoilers. No splash pages. Just the comics summed up in one panel. If there’s a series you like that isn’t covered on a regular basis, you’re more than welcome to email me. It’s on the sidebar.

This time I’m helped out by Was Taters, Gaijin Dan, Jody and Space Jawa. Many thanks to them and everyone else who made the past 150 weeks such a fun routine.

Action Comics #12
Grant Morrison, Rags Morales, CAFU and Brad Walker

Age of Apocalypse #6
David Lapham and Renato Arlem

Animal Man #12 (Gavin’s pick)
Jeff Lemire, Scott Snyder and Steve Pugh

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Sunday Sunday Sunday! We’re going to have a weekly chat about Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad. I buy mine off Amazon, so I’m usually a day behind, but every Sunday around showtime I’ll post an open thread. I’ll probably start linking the Breaking Bad podcasts and trailers and whatnot

If you haven’t seen Breaking Bad, you should. You can find Breaking Bad:
-On AMC, Sundays at 10 eastern
–Seasons 1-4 on Netflix
–on DVD
–on Amazon Instant Video (my preferred method)

Rules:
-Don’t be a dick
-No spoiler warnings, so don’t come in unless you’ve seen the latest episode
-Feel free to hyperlink and youtube it up
-Liveblogging is cool, just be specific so we know why you’re going “WHOA DUDE WHOA WHOA BRO”

This week is “Fifty-One,” directed by Rian Johnson (Looper! Brick!) and written by Sam Catlin, who also wrote “Crawl Space,” the episode last season that ended with Walt laughing and gave me waking sleep paralysis in the process.

Sneak peek:

It’s been a pretty big week for Deadpool. We got the release of Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe #1 by Cullen Bunn and Dalibor Talajic. I had some hope on the miniseries due to the crazed and intense screams of the heroes on the cover, which made it seem like an offshoot of sorts of the Marvel Universe vs. Punisher series and its Wolverine prequel.

Sadly, the story has zero to do with that and is merely an exercise in having Deadpool murder all the Marvel superheroes singlehandedly. That on its own has potential if done right and I rather like the explanation where Psycho Man – disguised as a psychiatrist – accidentally unlocks a more powerful and sinister third voice in Deadpool’s head that sets him off on a mission of bloodlust. Without the kill count, this would make for a good story arc for the main series. It certainly would have worked better than the “Deadpool gets committed” story they tried about a year ago.

The basic concept shares similarities with two Marvel comics. One is Garth Ennis’ Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe (naturally) and the other is What If: Wolverine: Enemy of the State by Jimmie Robinson and Carmine Di Giandomenico. The Punisher one is about a world where Frank Castle feels that the superheroes caused his family’s deaths and he hunts them down one-by-one, succeeding until realizing the error of his ways and offing himself. The Wolverine one is based on Logan staying programmed by Hydra and going on a killing spree against superheroes with the organization’s help. He kills a whole lot of them until Kitty Pryde sacrifices her arm (and seemingly her life) to put him down.

Neither comic is perfect, and the Punisher one is definitely something Ennis wrote with his free hand, but they both succeed in making the killers worth caring about. For the Punisher, we care about him because he’s our protagonist and he’s only human. He isn’t invincible and only through experience, smarts and luck – not to mention the convenient incompetence of his enemies – does he make it out alive. Suffice to say, he does come close to death several times. With Wolverine, we care about him being a viable threat. Wolverine is already a scary murder machine on his own, but with Hydra backing him, they’re able to teleport him when he’s in trouble. Not only is he a ruthless killer who’s almost impossible to kill, but you can’t even contain him. When Spider-Man webs him up, he teleports out of it and then stabs Spider-Man to death. He theoretically can be stopped, but it makes sense that he’s killed every major superhero… especially since I think this is when Thor was out of the picture.

I bring this up because of a problem with the Deadpool comic. A major problem from the opening scene that took me out of the issue. The opener shows that Deadpool has inexplicably killed Reed Richards and turned Thing into gravel. Invisible Woman finds him decapitating Human Torch. She does the correct course of action and creates a force field inside Deadpool’s head. With a painful scream, his head pops like a pimple and he’s left with an empty neck. His body collapses, partially sprawled over Torch’s corpse. Sue turns her head ever-so-slightly to the right to look at Johnny’s body and we’re given a silent panel of her staring down.

Then THIS happens in the very next shot.

Seriously?

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One of my favorite things comes from an anecdote Richard Pryor told about Jim Brown on his Wanted album. (Apparently you can’t buy that album in MP3 form, which is a crime. I found the vinyl in a record shop for $1.99, and please believe I bought it just because. If you see it, cop it. There’s at least three all-time classic bits on there, if not more.) Here’s a quick sample:

I had a friend, he was gon’ have a fight with Jim. Another big nigga, ’bout six-five. You know, he said eight dudes was holding his ass, he was gonna get in, just, “Motherfuck Jim let me go motherfucker motherFUCK a Jim Brown!”

And he said Jim said something that just chilled his shit. All right, he said, Jim said, “Gentlemen, I think if you let the man go, he could express hisself a little better.”

Motherfucker said he started whispering to the motherfuckers that was holding him, he was saying, “Any of you niggas let go of me, I’ll kill any motherfucker that take erry finger off my body. Now just ease my ass out the door, that’s right, don’t start no shit.”

That’s cold, Jack. I love Pryor’s Jim Brown stories, because Brown comes off as this real indomitable, unmovable force of nature. “Gentleman, I think if you let the man go, he could express hisself a little better” is the most confident thing in the entire world. It’s so cold-blooded that you can’t help but love it. More than that, though, it’s just good writing. It’s evocative and real, totally believable and alluring, to an extent. You want to see Jim Brown whup this dude just because you knows he can and he knows he can.

This sort of thing is why I enjoy crime fiction and action movies so much. There’s always that point where someone gets to say something and it just infects your brain. “Hey, you” in King of New York, “You probably heard we ain’t in the prisoner-takin’ business; we in the killin’ Nazi business. And cousin, business is a-boomin’,” from Inglourious Basterds, “We gotta kill every last rat-bastard one of them,” from Sin City: The Big Fat Kill. “No AC, but the heater work — MURRRRK!” off Schoolboy Q’s “Nightmare on Figg St.” (great music video for that one, too, love that intro) from Habits & Contradictions. And, of course, “I’ve punished him from ear to ear, now I’ve saved the best for you,” from Norah Jones’s “Miriam” is a stellar example of murda muzik.

Murda muzik is a term I stole from Mobb Deep, but it’s basically exactly what it sounds like: songs about doing people in. The more creative or technically proficient the better, right? I feel similarly about crime novels and action flicks. You have to wow me. I’m not looking for comfort food, I’m looking for something nuts. So imagine my surprise when one of the top 3 best examples of murda muzik thus far was made by an R&B singer who I don’t usually associate with people getting done in. (The other is Spaceghostpurrp’s “Get Ya Head Bust” off that Mysterious Phonk, and the third is variable because I always forget good ones.) The video is perfect for the song, as far as I’m concerned:

I can’t believe the blood on the oar. Astounding.

This is the second video for Little Broken Hearts that features someone getting killed over love. The album is about heartbreak, obviously, and “Miriam” is my favorite song on the album. It’s low key and stripped down, with not a lot of majestic production on anything but Jones’s voice. Her delivery is a little… not raspy exactly, but rougher than I expect from her.

“Miriam” is about heartbreak, but it’s really about revenge. Miriam slept with Jones’s man in her own house, Jones found out, and now somebody’s got to die. The man is already gone, and now it’s Miriam’s turn.

“I’ve punished him from ear to ear, now I’ve saved the best for you” rocked my world when I first heard it. I thought I heard it wrong, honestly. I tend to have my first listen of albums while I’m out and about and traveling, so I’m not always listening. Words and lines sometimes reach out from the background radiation of the music to grab me, and that’s exactly what happened here.

“I’ve punished him from ear to ear” is such a strange phrase, but it’s not hard to understand at all. You just have to work for it, just the tiniest bit. It’s delivered in such a flat and matter of fact tone. I could see someone quietly confessing to it, or screaming about it as a threat, but Jones’s delivery feels even more menacing. It feels like a foregone conclusion. It sounds inevitable. Hopeless. Like she’s telling Miriam this, with an empty smile on her face and her head slightly cocked. “This is going to happen. You deserve this.”

“Oh Miriam, that’s such a pretty name.” That’s the most cold-blooded thing of all, the way Jones approaches this murder like it’s just a conversation that needs to be had. It’s a responsibility. It’s fate, justice, and right. She’s being sincere, but it doesn’t matter. You’re going to the bottom of the lake. She just wanted to let you know.

I love this stuff. It’s not just about one liners. I’m generally not big on those. (“Stick around” is an exception, of course.) It’s about the intent and malice and sheer cold-bloodedness. Just a complete and utter unwillingness to accept the fact that another human being is an actual person, instead of an object. It’s hard to explain without sounding like a monster, but as an example of escapism, as a fan of revenge tales, as a dude who will read or watch almost anything where people smoke cigarettes and shoot each other, it’s great. I’ve fetishized stylish murder, I guess.

Norah Jones performed the song live on Letterman at some point. I missed it until today, but check it out:

I like how the different instrumentation changes the flavor of the song just a little bit. The addition of that warbly guitar solo and the more prominent drumming… I dig it. I like that she has a backup singer on a few lines, too.

Little Broken Hearts is 3 bucks on Amazon today, and I think eight or nine any other day. I’ve bought a lot of albums this year, but this is one of my favorites.