Here we are in the latter half of 2009. Finally, the five issue series they were hyping in 2007 — when they first started soliciting Ultimate Power #8 — is coming to a close. Through Ultimatum, we see the Ultimate line giving birth to the Ultimate Comics line, only it’s the kind of childbirth that horrifically kills the mother and gives us a baby caked in blood.

But where were we? Magneto attacked the entire world and now the surviving heroes are out to stop him. With one arm left, he stands defiantly before those who would slay him.

Thanks to ManiacClown for coming up with whatever it is Wolverine is ranting about. We’ll be back tomorrow to see Magneto’s rebuttal.

Day Two!
Day Three!
Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

Follow-up #1
Follow-up #2
Follow-up #3
Follow-up #4
Follow-up #5

(Don’t read #4 if you intend on seeing that Orphan movie any time soon)

No, not the last couple pages of Legion of Three Worlds with Superboy Prime. Though David Uzumeri had his own fun with that scene. The bastard.

Dethklok vs. the Goon is great fun.

Eric Powell’s cartoony depictions of Dethklok and the other Metalocalypse characters is wonky at best, but the one-shot is still worth picking up. Funny and filled with such meetings as Rockso and Franky, Pickles and Willie Nagel, Skwisgaard and Momma Norton, Toki and Peaches Valentine and, best of all, Goon and Dethklok’s hooded security army.

On a similar note, Dethalbum II has been given an official tracklist. “Laser Cannon Deth Sentence” is on there, which is all I need.

I dig Jorge Vega and Jeff McComsey’s 9 Months, but I think my favorite part might be the cover. It’s a simple picture, just Thomasina, knee-deep in pregnancy and holding a gun while looking surprised. Something about it manages to sum the series up pretty well. This isn’t one of those books where it’s about backflips and double dragon flip kicks. It’s about desperation, and hard choices, and responsibility.

9 Months is, more or less, about the funny turns life takes. Thomasina went from a promising track star to being stuck in a rut. She got the coolguy boyfriend who turns out to be more of a jerk than a coolguy, she alienated her family, and now she’s pregnant. Her past as a track star and present as something else are constantly put into direct conflict over the course of the first issue. Running is even used as a metaphor for why she distanced herself from her family. It was teenage rebellion, basically, but she was sure she was running toward something sustainable.

Later, covered in blood (her own and her late boyfriend’s), I think she starts to realize that she hadn’t. Instead, she’d forsaken what was good in her life in favor of what was flashy. When she’s forced to choose between her current life and the life of her unborn child, she picks the youth and fights back, killing her boyfriend.

The problem is that her boyfriend was far from a nobody. He was the younger brother of a local big shot, and that big shot has a list of demands for Thomasina. She’s going to abstain from alcohol and drugs, take her vitamins, and have the baby. After that, the bigshot gets to keep it.

The last page of the book asks “how far [Thomasina will] go to protect her child?” and answers “too far.” I’m interested, because Jorge and Jeff have built a small, but realistic, cast of characters and created a way to throw them into conflict with each other over the nine months of Thomasina’s pregnancy. They don’t shy away from violence, but they don’t dwell on it, either. It happens, it’s horrible, and then you have to pick up the pieces.

I’ve only read the first issue of 9 Months, but I get the feeling that it’s about picking up the pieces. You can check out a preview of the book here, and read the first eight pages of Bloody Pulp, Jeff & Jorge’s new work over at Zuda. If you like it, vote for it. Let’s see more from these guys.

Last time on We Care a Lot, I discussed Eddie Brock’s cancer retcon. Before that, I was talking about Daniel Way’s Venom on-going series. To refresh your memory, the Venom symbiote is on the loose up in Canada. It killed off all of army girl Patricia Robertson’s friends and is on its way to a more populated area. Robertson is allied with an alien life form named the Suit, who fights with a cell phone gun. They are being antagonized by a pair of spy chicks who want Venom for themselves. Although they have already been killed, another couple of them have popped up. Venom has finally settled on a host that he can live off of forever.

And that’s where we left off. Venom #10 begins with the Venom-controlled Wolverine attacking Vic and Frankie’s ship and forcing it to crash. The two suit up in their armor and reveal to the reader that they’re probably into each other sexually. Of course they are.

They don’t last a minute. Frankie is stabbed to death by Venom-Wolverine and Vic stumbles upon her doppelganger’s corpse from earlier. She realizes that she’s nothing more than a clone, puts her gun to her head and pulls the trigger.

The torso remains of the Suit give Patricia a new cell phone he has created. He says that he placed the original in a special place and that the new phone acts as a detonator. Venom-Wolverine busts in after her and she presses the button to activate the first phone. As we see, after Wolverine was knocked out by that nuke, the Suit tore open his chest and shoved his phone in there. Now the cell phone goes off, electrocuting Wolverine from the inside and forcing off the symbiote.

BOOOO!

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Asterios Polyp
David Mazzucchelli
Pantheon
344 pages
ISBN: 0307377326

David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp is looking like the latest capital A Art book, the kind of thing that people smarter than I (such as Jog or Douglas Wolk) are doubtless going to pore over, deconstruct, reconstruct, and analyze over the next few weeks. And, well, with good reason– Mazzucchelli does a lot of interesting things with the format and formula of comic books, and ends up creating amazing. More than anything, all ideas of what constitutes an “art” comic aside, Asterios Polyp is fascinating.

I read through this 344-page book pretty quickly, and barely noticed the time passing. Each chapter alternates time periods, telling us about Asterios’s history and his present, and are visually distinct. Every fistful of pages, the style switches from a standard comic format to something more influenced by graphic design and experimental. Mazzucchelli shows off a variety of styles in the book, even going so far as to have individual characters exist in their own styles.

There’s a visual metaphor introduced fairly early on, where Asterios and his wife are a combination of two different styles, with Asterios taking the form of the building blocks of a drawing of a human and Hana being the details and shading. When they meet, they merge to form a complete drawing. When strife hits their relationship, Hana violently pulls out of Asterios’s reality. It’s an amazingly effective move, and one which works on a gut level. You don’t need captions to tell you that they’re troubled, or growing apart, or anything– you simply have to look.

Asterios Polyp is so fascinating because it approaches storytelling in a way that only comics can. It takes advantage of the format to do something new and interesting, while coming at it from a new angle. Everything in life is about delivering information of one sort of another, be it via text, pictures, texture, or taste. Mazzucchelli doesn’t use the images in Asterios Polyp to show cool images or poses. Instead, each image has a point. We never (well, maybe twice, but he’s obscured) see Asterios’s face from the front. He’s always looking to the left or the right. It struck me in a few different ways while I was reading. It makes Asterios seem like he’s always doing something. There’s something just off-panel that we can’t see that’s he’s really interested in. However, it also makes him somewhat untrustworthy or uncomfortable. He’s never looking you in the eye. He never seems to be paying attention. There’s a level of distance there.

Most of all, though, it plays into the dualism that forms the foundation of his personal philosophy. Asterios Polyp can be accurately described as the story of a man learning to count to three. He embraces the idea of there being 1 and 2, yes and no, linear and plastic, and form and function. When his life falls apart, he learns to count in threes. (It’s interesting that twos vs threes is portrayed as a yin/yang of its own, inflexibility vs flexibility, but I’m not sure what that means just yet.)

Asterios is a book that’s fun to look at. The color palette is very focused. There are a lot of purples, yellows, pinks, blues, and blacks. Toward the end of the book, though, for a few pages, the palette opens up in an amazing scene. It’s a burst of color, and life, and a symbol of things to come. It’s a counterpoint to the beginning of the book, which was somber and fairly depressing.

Basically, Asterios Polyp is a must-read. It’s straightforward enough that anyone can enjoy it, but has layers that you can peel back and examine. I’m probably going to read it agin in a couple weeks, with the goal of just poring over the art. Mazzucchelli uses a lot of techniques in Asterios Polyp that all comics could benefit from. He got there first, though, and set the bar pretty high. The writing and art are excellent, and full of insights on how both comics and life work.

Asterios Polyp is objectively better than anything you’ve read this year thus far. There’s absolutely no question in my mind about that.

Bloody Pulp is the latest offering from Jeff McComsey and Jorge Vega. McComsey is one of the brains behind American Terrorist, which is available now on G1 and soon on iPhone. Its subtitle says it all: “Confession of a Human Smart Bomb.” Jorge Vega is the guy behind Gunplay, a book on vengeance in the Old West that I thoroughly enjoyed last year. Together, they have created Bloody Pulp.

Bloody Pulp has a few of my favorite things. It’s got crime and fisticuffs, for one. The lead is John “Pulp” Polopowski, who is brilliantly described in the synopsis on the Zuda site as “a nightmare for hire.” That’s an inspired description, and from what I’ve seen of Bloody Pulp, it’s true. When you need someone to be thoroughly beaten and disposed of, Pulp is your man.

The twist, of course, is that he isn’t entirely on the level. He’s been secreting people away to a safe house, rather than killing them. It’s kind of like witness protection through a funhouse mirror, only someone might beat you to death for disobeying the rules.

The hook is the arrival of Eustace, “a Negro bandleader”. The synopsis promises that sparks are going to fly due to his presence, and I’ve got the good word from Jorge that says he’s going to dig into the race and class issues of the ’30s. I’m definitely interested.

We’ve got eight pages to look at on ZudaComics.com. Check it out and, if you like it, vote for it on the site. As things currently stand, Jeff and Jorge are ranked #1. If they maintain that position, they get a slot on the Zuda site. The eight pages were just enough to get me interested, and Jorge and Jeff’s prior work were pretty solid. I’m going to be taking a look at a couple of their books, specifically American Terrorist and 9 Months, very soon.

In the meantime, though, you need to vote for Bloody Pulp and tell your friends.

Batman doesn’t care about sex.

I mean, sure, he’ll have sex sometimes. He’s had a series of short-lived relationships, the most popular of which involve an easy escape hatch. Benefit of dating criminals, right? It’s pretty clear to me that he doesn’t care about sex. He’s got a mission, he’s been trained, and guess what! Sex is entirely beside the point. He’ll do it when he has to, but you won’t see Bruce at a bar talking to Bonita Applebum.

Parker is the star of more than a few of Richard Stark’s novels. He’s a no-nonsense thief and strong-arm, very expert in planning and even better at putting a stop to any funny business. If you cross Parker, he’ll lean you before you even get a chance to think about what you just did. He enjoy sex, but only at specific times. If he’s on the job, or planning a job, he’s got no drive at all. After, though, he can spend several days horizontal. His drive slowly fades away after that, until he’s practically a monk in the run-up to the next job.

Ogami Itto? Don’t even. I’m six volumes in, and I don’t think he’s had sex for pleasure once. He’s done it to save someone’s life, and to grease some wheels, but never because he chatted someone up. It’s entirely possible that he’s just respecting his dead wife’s memory, but it’s much more likely that it’s because he’s walking the path of the assassin and has no time for physical pleasure.

All three of these guys are focused, motivated, driven, and paragons of self control. They all approach sex on their own terms, blatantly ignore it when they feel like it, but are still considered virile. It’s definitely fair to say that they are all generally portrayed as Real Men, even across cultural barriers. Ogami is a hop from Parker, who is in turn a skip from Batman, who is himself a jump from Ogami. They have very similar characterizations, despite having some fairly irreconcilable differences between them. Ogami murders for a living, Parker isn’t opposed to slapping a woman around if it’ll help a heist, and Batman is a manchild who sates his desire for justice by beating up criminals.

Together, I think that these three say something pretty interesting about what it means to be a man. They all fit the basic stereotype of a Real Man. They’re physically attractive, be it in a pretty boy sort of way or a more rugged manner. They’re physically capable, able to demolish most men with a single move, be it a punch, gunshot, or swing of a sword. They’re intelligent enough to create complicated plans that always come off perfectly, human error aside. They’re witty enough to be able to think on their feet when a situation goes south and to come out on top. They aren’t afraid to use violence when the time comes, either. That sounds like a Real Man, doesn’t it?

The sex thing is what makes it interesting. Virility is tied up in violence and physical strength, and all three of these guys have it in spades. Ogami kills dudes by the baker’s dozen, Parker is a machine, and Batman is a highly trained non-lethal ninja. When they do have sex, it’s never shown as “making love.” It’s something fast, primal, rough, and vaguely taboo. There’s a thrill to it, particularly when it comes to Batman and Parker. Parker is only interested after he re-establishes his manhood by making a lot of money and breaking a few heads. Batman’s biggest flame is Catwoman, the object of many a late-night chase and cowled makeout session. To borrow a line, they keep the masks on because it’s better that way. Ogami himself only indulges, or lowers, himself in sex when it fits into his quest. The first time he has sex in volume 1, it’s to show exactly how little he cares for the samurai customs of the day. In fact, he proves his manhood by rejecting the traditional notion of it.

I think it comes down to control. Men are supposed to be in control of themselves, their emotions, and the situation at all times. What better way to show this control than to refuse sex, one of the most primal needs of human beings? Ogami treats most women he encounters, and definitely the prostitutes, with something approaching contempt. They, like anyone else, are beneath his notice. It seems like every Parker novel has him refusing the advances of an appropriately attractive and willing woman until he decides he wants to bother with her. Batman’s celibacy is practically a superpower, considering that a couple of his villains are outright seductresses and the rest are openly sexy/sexual.

This occurred to me after finishing one of Stark’s Parker novels, one in which Stark has Parker question his sexual habits. It got me thinking, and I soon realized that Ogami Itto was similar in execution, if not in tone. It all really clicked into place once Batman came into the picture, and I realized that it was more of a trend than I’d expected.

Last time on We Care a Lot, I talked about Daniel Way’s Venom on-going. Hitting the halfway point, I decided to stop and give myself a break to recuperate. It’s good to know that while that series was going on, Venom started to appear elsewhere. And why wouldn’t he? The reason he was turned into a full-blown bad guy again was so he could go back to being Spider-Man’s threat of the day.

Venom would make his return to Spider-Man’s world in Spectacular Spider-Man #1 for a five-issue story called The Hunger. This isn’t to be confused with the super-awesome four-issue story from years earlier called Venom: The Hunger, but it usually is. It’s kind of funny how although it’s obvious Paul Jenkins probably didn’t read that Len Kaminski story, he more or less wrote the same story, only with Spider-Man and without the happy ending.

As Paul Jenkins writes the story, we get Humberto Ramos on art. This is rather interesting, considering Francisco Herrera is doing the art on Venom at the same time. A little research shows that Ramos mentored Herrera and that really shouldn’t come to a surprise of anyone. Case in point:

Which came out a month apart.

Though there are parts that annoyed me, The Hunger isn’t so bad. If anything, it’s easily the most important Venom story in the past 15 years, so you have to give them that. Really. While it introduces some ideas that don’t go anywhere, it still gets the ball rolling and leads us to where we are today.

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Path of the Assassin volume 1: Serving in the Dark
Writer: Kazuo Koike
Artist: Goseki Kojima
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
ISBN: 1593075022
320 pages

Yeah, I didn’t finish this one.

The biggest problem with Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley’s Invincible is the inconsistent tone of the series. Invincible veers from pretty enjoyable JRsr-era Spider-Man superheroics and drama to early Image blood-n-guts fairly regularly. And, well, the bits I like are like old Spider-Man comics. The bits that are covered in blood and severed limbs? Not my thing.

Path of the Assassin has a similar problem. It has a really interesting premise. It isn’t what I expected at all. Rather than being about a ninja steadily and stealthily killing dudes, it’s almost a goofy buddy movie. Hattori Hanzo is assigned to protect and serve Tokugawa Ieysasu, future ruler of Japan. Hanzo is a ninja, from a clan of ninjas, and is ordered to “serve in the dark.”

Pretty heavy, right? I thought so, too, up until Ieyasu plays with his wisp of a mustache in a mirror, frowns, cuts off a few of his pubes, and then fastens them to his face. Ieyasu is 16. Hanzo is 15. Ieyasu is pretty ineffectual and awful. He isn’t a bad person, exactly, just inexperienced. Hanzo isn’t all that much more experienced, but he’s a ninja, so he gets to do a lot of cool things.

I was digging it until the big tone shift came. Ieyasu is due to be married in a couple days, and he has no idea about sex. He asks his new ninja servant to show him what a man does with a woman. Not with a hooker, because you pay them to do whatever you like, but with a woman. So, Hanzo jumps in a river, drags a woman to shore, and rapes her. Later, after lying to and killing a few dudes Ieyasu still has questions. (Hanzo and the girl are still nude.) Hanzo gives Ieyasu some old fashioned knowledge from back home (“Sleep six times and listen to the woman’s bosom.” After that, you’ll know whether or not she loves you.), and then the girl, who actually saved Hanzo’s life shortly before, decides that not only is she going to take the fake name Hanzo made up for her when the guards approached, she is going to stick with him because now no man will have her. That’s amore, right?

Ieyasu later tried to apply those lessons to his new wife, who by the way had a previous lover he doesn’t know about, but found that he could only do it from behind. He pondered the reasons why, wondered why it worked fine for Hanzo, and blah blah blah this chapter is called “Oppressive Night of Ass” and is boring.

It’s not even the rape or dumb (and surprisingly explicit!) sex scene that really did it. I mean, they helped by being so terrible, but they were just a part of the problem, rather than my biggest problem. By now, about a third of the way through the volume, I’d realized that I was already getting bored, and a ridiculous twist like that wasn’t happening. The goofy interactions between Hanzo and Ieyasu were pretty good, if overly cute. But the switching between stiff samurai drama (which includes LW&C-style violence, rape, sex scenes) and the goofiness doesn’t work for me.

Like Invincible, it feels like a couple different books mashed together. The samurai stuff wouldn’t be out of place in Lone Wolf & Cub at all, and I think the relationship between Hanzo and Ieyasu has legs. The two halves of the story just don’t mesh well. The serious bits are too serious, the goofy bits are too goofy. I mean, every page of the fifteen page sex scene between Ieyasu and his new wife features Ieyasu pulling awkward faces, and he’s a George Costanza-looking chubby awkward guy.

Path of the Assassin can’t decide between being a light action comedy tale and a hardcore samurai drama. I’m open to either of the two styles. The mix of styles, though, doesn’t work for me. Lone Wolf occasionally does a goofy story with Daigoro, but it’s never quite so off the mark as the image of Tokugawa Ieyasu, of the brief pubic hair mustache, creepily observing his pet ninja raping a girl and taking mental notes. Path went on for fourteen more volumes, the latest of which was just released, so there must be some merit to it. Perhaps it improves later on.

Next week, we’re back to Lone Wolf & Cub, I think.