And now we’ve got Hollywood Zombies. That link is straight up NSFW, so don’t look at it at work. There’s no nudity, but plenty of tasteless gore and creepy humor. Here are its ratings descriptors: :wtf: :psyduck: :nws: :nms: :aaa: :911:

I thought the first Marvel Zombies was tasteless, but funny, and promptly left the rest of the franchise alone. Dead horse and all that, you know? I guess what I’m saying is that zombies are the pirates of 2007: a dead joke. This card set eclipses pretty much everything out of the Marvel Zombies line, though. Wowsers!

(I do have to say that a Mobile Zombie Galactus Corps is still a hilarious idea, which is why I’m reading the Black Panther arc featuring them.)

:quagmire:

’nuff said.

It’s time for another look at decent comic book scenes as having been skewed by horrible Photoshop skills. First, we have Civil War, where Reed Richards shuts down the cyborg Thor clone with his complicated voice-activated code.

Being in an Illuminati meeting was pretty fun stuff if it was a holiday.

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Courtesy of Pedro Tejeda at Funnybook Babylon, a piece on why Falcon being burned alive on the cover of Captain America 29 really isn’t that bad, dudes. Also, he calls me a “respected black man,” and I just cannot turn that down.

But, really, though, he makes some good points.

I personally feel that the reason, it went over our heads is a slightly more sinister one than us missing the malicious intent hidden in the cover. I hate the fact that a lot of people look at this cover and just see a black man on fire. In some cases, people don’t even mention Snap’s name at all. It’s as if no matter how much the character is developed, advanced in status, or just outright written, readers won’t be able to get past his skin color.

This is the catch-22 that lies at the heart of trying to fix comics. It can make people too cautious, and keep [group] safe and out of danger and… boring. It can be too overzealous and make [group] into a victim. Where is the middle ground? Is there one? That’s the question that everyone has to answer for themselves.

I really like Brian Azzarello’s Loveless. It’s a Reconstruction-era Western, with all that entails. The latest issue, the one that dropped this week, features kind of a lot of black dudes getting lynched and buried. A massacre is the centerpiece of the book. Men come into a township and murder every single able-bodied black male in front of their families. The families don’t even get to cut down the bodies.

It’s harsh and it’s ugly and it’s offensive… and it’s kind of a really good comic series. If I was a different person, I can pinpoint exactly what problems I’d have with the series and be right.

How’d I decide this? Why? I think it’s because I trust the writer to be better than what the story could be. I can point and say “Atticus is going to do this, this, and this” over the course of the next story arc to make this crime right. I don’t feel malicious intent in this, just an attempt to tell a story as it should be told.

“Where do you draw the line?” is something that you should think about, sometimes. Just realize that, a lot of the time, your reasons won’t be consistent or make sense.

I’ve been putting out vinyl since ’93 and never looked back once
And y’all trying to chase me
You don’t innovate because you can’t innovate
It’s not a choice despite what you might tell your boys
Keep your identity crisis under the table
I always knew who I was and I’ll always be more famous
-El-P, “We’re Famous”

“What the fuck is DC anyway?” Mr. Quesada said, stoking the fires. “They’d be better off calling it AOL Comics. At least people know what AOL is. I mean, they have Batman and Superman, and they don’t know what to do with them. That’s like being a porn star with the biggest dick and you can’t get it up. What the fuck?” (Paul Levitz, DC’s president and publisher, declined to comment for this story through a spokesperson.)
—The Observer, 04/28/02

Joe Quesada, EiC of Marvel Comics, gets a lot of crap.

To be honest, a lot of it is deserved. Marvel has done some bone-headed stuff under his rule. Losing Grant Morrison, the Heroes for Hire thing, giving Greg Land work, almost firing Mark Waid, and so on. I’m sure you have a laundry list of reasons to dislike the dude. He’s got a big mouth, too, and doesn’t hesitate to open it.

But, and here is the rub– it’s his fault that comics are so good right now. Let me explain.

There is a philosophy that a president, I think it was President Rickard, used to have. Okay, it was Truman and I was reaching way too hard for the Prez Rickard joke. Anyway, it’s “The buck stops here.” In other words, if you’re the boss, all the bad crap that happens is your fault, whether you had a direct hand in it or not. It’s a way of taking responsibility for things that your organization does. It’s also a way of blaming the head guy in charge for everything and anything.

Turn that around, though. Doesn’t the head guy in charge deserve some credit for the good things, too? I think so.

Joey da Q is not the best guy around, I won’t deny that. Marvel is hardly perfect. But, he’s trying, and I can respect that. Obviously, the credit for these decisions should be shared with his editors, the creators, Bill Jemas, and Dan Buckley, but Joe Q should get a slice of that, as well.

This is pretty long, and I cover a lot of stuff, from comics to sex to race to dissing the competition, so click through.
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Good news!

We hit 100,000 hits yesterday afternoon!

Bad news!

I won’t have time to write a full post until tonight!

Just wanted to put that out there 🙂

Steve Epting went from this:

to this:

Patrick Zircher did very passable work on Cable/Deadpool. Good, not great. Here’s a few covers:

But, have you seen his Terror, Inc pencils?

Holy crow! What’s Marvel putting in the water? I know that there are a few other artists who have really manned up under Marvel’s iron fist, too. It’ll be interesting to see who else goes through big changes.

And yes, I realize Steve Epting came back with Crossgen or whatever, but still! His work is incredible.

The last comic I read, there was a lot of rape and crying. Kinda harshed my boner for fun, you know?
–Casanova Quinn, Casanova #2

Casanova (words by Matt Fraction, art by Gabriel Ba) can be explained in two lines from a Wu-Tang song:
Yo, too many songs, weak rhymes that’s mad long
Make it brief son, half short and twice strong
–The GZA (Genius), “As High As Wu-Tang Get”

That’s on Wu-Tang Forever, by the way.

Those two lines describe Casanova perfectly. Casanova has, save for the first issue, 16 pages per issue. The average comic has 22 pages. The missing pages are given up to behind the scenes-type text pieces and art showcases. In addition, the series so far is seven issues long, and each issue is a complete story unto itself. One complete mission for Casanova Quinn. The seven issues connect in an overarching way to form the first arc, Luxuria.

Casanova is one of the greatest comics of all time.

I’m trying to review this without ruining it for you, but I think the first issue may end up being a casualty of war. You see, Casanova Quinn is a thief. He’s suave, sophisticated, he’s like Han Solo but more honest with himself. He’s having fun living the life, but everything goes wrong.

Cass has a sister, Zephyr. She dies on a mission, which causes Cass to reconnect with his father Cornelius, the head of EMPIRE. Zephyr was the good twin, so to speak, and the jewel in her father’s eye. Where Cass went left, she went right. Both Cass and his father loved her… because she was not Cass.

After that, Cass’s world goes upside down. He ends up in a parallel universe, one where he died on a mission and his sister, Zephyr, is still alive. Only– things are different. Here, Zephyr is the evil twin. She works for Newman Xeno, noted criminal and head of WASTE. Newman Xeno wants an inside man in EMPIRE, and who better than the evil alternate universe twin of the son of EMPIRE’s top dog?

That’s right. Evil Twin and Evil Twin versus Daddy. What’s the word for that? Ultraoedipal?

Casanova’s dialogue is sharp and pop culture infused, but not in that kind of annoying too cute for it’s own good way that Joss Whedon does it. The characters have real motivations, and these are motivations are ones we can relate to. Cass doesn’t want to save the world, he just wants to do right by someone important to him. Zephyr loves thrills. Cornelius? He gets a good moment where he reconnects with his son.

Casanova has assassin pop stars, hyper-advanced cultures, robots, sex, a dude who creates robots to have sex with, and tons of other mad ideas– but it’s all about the character moments. The ending is real- everything that’s been building up throughout the series comes to bear and zigzags at the last moment, but in a way that feels right. The relationship between Cass and Zephyr alone is a complicated one, and veers from simple sibling rivalry to outright malice, but in this weirdly familial way.

Gabriel Ba’s art works, too. There’s a few panels that are just pitch perfect. The scene where Cass attempts to kidnap a certain man who may or may not be a god is poetry in motion, from eye-opening to “I don’t believe in you.” There’s a panel of someone crying really late in the book that yanks your heartstrings something fierce.

This, along with David Aja’s work in Iron Fist, is some fine, fine work that really brings things to a newer or more experimental level. There are a lot of scenes that really could’ve come off like crap under a less skilled pen. The god scene, yeah, and there’s also a scene where Cass is pretty much reduced to a two-dimensional being and the art totally sells it. He turns into non-toned black lines with no shading at all, and you instantly get the point. Writing-wise, there’s an issue where each page is one of three moments in time and they cycle throughout the issue. Easily could’ve fallen flat– but it works. The art sells it and it ends up working.

Casanova is a brave comic, dense, and better for it. Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba took a chance and poured distilled quality into sixteen pages. It never stops being interesting, because each issue is like an infodump of fictional and real information. The “savages” from one issue of Casanova are loosely based on a real people, the last living vestige of neolithic society in the modern day. An island of the past sitting in the present.

Casanova is half short, almost, and twice strong. It’s a strong work, and the recently released hardcover is definitely worth your purchase. It’s got more stuff in it than Marvel’s Civil War megahitblockbusterpieceofcrap. Even better– it’s fun.

edit, the next day: I screwed up and forgot to talk about the text pieces from Fraction and art showcase from Ba. Anyway, in exchange, Fraction love from back in the day: Perfection in Slices and A Few Good Comics, wherein I do talk about the backmatter a little.

But, you know what? They really ain’t that bad, either! Onward!

It’s those kids. That’s what’s different. He’s got sidekicks. Maybe if I get a couple of punk kids. Picked ’em up off the street and taught them what I know. Mothboy or Lepidoptera Lad or…
–Killer Moth, Batgirl: Year One

You reading any good comics right now? What’s that? You’re reading comics you don’t like? Pfft and *smh*. Read good comics, okay? Treat the problem, not the symptom.

Good Desktops

Playing with a new format today. First up, some desktops. I can’t promise that these are properly formatted, but they are a few of the 221 desktops in my DocumentsDesktops folder so they’re appropriate. Two are related, the others are just cool. We’ve got art from Marcos Martin, Michael Lark, Darwyn Cooke, and Talent Caldwell.

These desktops are Good.

Good Comics

These comics are good.
Mighty Skullboy Army (by Jacob Chabot)
I was sent this one by a buddy who knows the author, so I guess this is my first comp copy of a comic! Sweet! Of course, I received the book in Aprilish, so this is way late and I’ve got no excuse really! Sorry Kevin.

And what a comic it is! Did anyone out there ever watch Dexter’s Lab? I used to love it dearly. Mighty Skullboy Army reminds me a lot of Dexter’s Lab, not in content, but in tone. It’s got that same kind of slick sense of humor that both kids and adults can appreciate. The art is very sharp, too. It’s very cartoony, but a lot of fun to look at. The scenes involving the monkey are, in my ever so humble opinion, some of the best in the book.

MSA is, essentially, about a young supervillain (Skullboy) who is in way over his head. You see, he’s a young fella… and he’s got to go to school. You can’t very well conquer the city, nay, the world, from a school desk. He’s got a few assistants in the form of a monkey, a robot, and an intern. One problem: they’re all imbeciles and/or too flighty.

Mighty Skullboy Army is whimsical, but in a good way. It’s a respite from the super serious, or faux serious, stuff I usually read. I hate to invoke the name of the almighty Calvin & Hobbes, which is the Greatest Newspaper Strip of All Time To Which There Are No Contenders, but it is fun like C&H is fun. If you like good comics, MSA is up your alley.

Batgirl: Year One (words by Chuck Dixon and Scott Beatty, art by Marcos Martin and Alvaro Lopez)
I got my copy for 17.99, it’s 19.99 on Amazon pre-discount. Weird.
Anyway, DC was, at one point, running the Year One concept into the ground. Hard. They whooshed hard on what Year One stories should be and pumped out some pap. And then, Chuck Dixon and Scott Beatty come along and get it right, not once, but twice. Robin Year One, which I believe was drawn by Javier Pulido, and Batgirl: Year One, by Marcos Martin/Alvaro Lopez, hearken back to the noir asthetic of Batman Year One in art.

Batgirl: Year One isn’t quite perfect. Dixon and Beatty seem to love tossing in little knowing nods to DC continuity, including a few too many references to Cassandra the Oracle, and a scene where someone tells Batgirl that heroes tend to end up crippled and stuff like that. It ends up being too cute by half and distracting.

On the other hand, the art and overall story are nearly flawless. It tells the tale of a young Barbara Gordon, a young lady who has just begun to pull on the tights. There are a lot of little character touches that are great. Babs Gordon is short for her age, thin, and not particularly chesty (cf. her current portrayal which is a bit busty and statuesque, ugh). She’s headstrong, impetuous, and very teenaged. She makes a lot of dumb decisions, despite being very smart. It’s practically a Marvel story, to be honest. Babs is flawed, and her flaw is her pride. She’s got to prove she’s better than everyone else expects her to be.

I just kind of realized that Babs Gordon, as written in Batgirl: Year One, is a slightly more responsible version of Veronica Mars. No wonder I like this book so much! Not to mention that it isn’t afraid to be silly.

More tomorrow. I’m trying to get back into the swing of things!

As a little addendum to my look at the comic-inspired CHIKARA Pro Wrestling covers, today they have revealed the cover for one of their latest events, Anniversario?. The question mark is part of the title.

Nice little homage to Dark Knight Returns #4. It’s extremely appropriate due to the backstory here. Chris Hero and the goddamn Mike Quackenbush are practically the top guys in CHIKARA. They used to be a tag team until Hero turned on Quack. Hero, being the cowardly heel, ducked out of any attempts at a grudge match. This somehow lasted two years.

So much like Superman vs. Batman in DKR, this is indeed a long time coming match between two old friends. Plus, as you probably have already noticed, their logos are based on Superman and Batman. I haven’t seen the match, but I hear nothing but exceptional things. I already ordered my copy.

I also had to order Anniversario!, the event that took place a day later. Not a comic cover, but a reference to those old MUSCLE figure posters. There’s a part at the show where I appear and share the most awkard high-five with the Retail Dragon and I need to not only see it on DVD, but need it in gif form. I’ll keep you updated on that.