Have you ever read something and enjoyed it, but then had someone point out what are in retrospect glaring, obvious flaws?

May I reintroduce you to Geoff Klock’s blog. He does a pretty good bit of critical thinking-type stuff at his blog and it’s a definitely worthy addition to your RSS reader. Here, he’s taken on Planetary 26.

Planetary: A Rant about story failures. Click the button to see a quote, or click the link to see the full post. He makes a few very, very good points.

In Planetary 26 we finally see Dowling, for the first time other than in a flashback, after a six year buildup. We have been teased with his weird power, some kind of mind worms (“Everyone who has ever met Dowling probably is Dowling.”). We don’t get to see his power at all. He scans Elijah for anything dangerous, finds nothing, and hands over all his secrets. (?!) Why he does not scan the Drummer is beyond me. Then Elijah announces the Drummer handed him a special device that means that no information will work in this area save one kind. That was an awfully powerful magic chip Dowling forgot to scan for. Then Elijah takes a door out and the ground rumbles and the shiftship from issue 4 appears and Dowling and Kim Suskind just fall to their deaths. After six years they die off screen. We get to see their bodies later. In the first few pages of the same issue Elijah just announces that Greene and Leather are dead. All four of the Planetary’s main villains die off screen.

You know what? I can’t exactly argue with him.

There are probably spoilers for 52 in this picture, so don’t click unless you want to be spoiled and/or absolutely terrified and have nightmares.

It’s a logic problem. How do you turn a ugly asian stereotype into a believable comic character?

You turn him into a hideous freaking death dealing robot machine thing. Holy moley. I thought Egg-fu showing up was just a joke, but this is an insane inversion of my expectations here. Gone are all the stereotypical features, in are robot death arms and a Mojo-mobile. Whoof.

This was kind of an insanely good week for comics. Seven Soldiers #1 was the event comic of forever, Deathblow #1 featured Brian Azzarello sporting a kind of Batman-esque sense of humor to good effect, Loveless #12 was a shock and a half, 52 was good, Black Panther had a great setup and more than a few great Storm moments… good week.

Too bad Wildcats #2 is pushed back to March!

“What people often forget, of course, is that Magneto, unlike the lovely Sir Ian McKellen, is a mad old terrorist twat. No matter how he justifies his stupid, brutal behaviour, or how anyone else tries to justify it, in the end he’s just an old bastard with daft, old ideas based on violence and coercion. I really wanted to make that clear at this time.”
–Grant Morrison

I’m not usually one to complain about comics companies “destroying” characters. In fact, I think it’s kind the kind of stupid invective that gives comic fans such a negative fanboy image. “Destroying” is a loaded term, and there’s much, much better ways to express your feelings on the matter. This may be my attempt at that, or my attempt at putting my foot in my mouth. U DECIDE.

I do think, however, that comics companies can make/allow some fairly terrible narrative choices. Turning Xorn into some kind of Jerry Springer-esque twin brother was one. Actually, every time Xorn has been mentioned outside of Morrison’s New X-Men has been a mistake, I think. Identity Crisis left a bad taste in my mouth, despite Rags Morales’s excellent art. I liked the scene where Batman and Robin are trying to get to Tim Drake’s house before his dad dies. That was powerful, but the death of Jack Drake? Bleh. He was a cool dude. Mark Millar turning the New Warriors into patsies? Bah, Doom says.

So basically what I’m saying is, not everything comics companies do is great. Big surprise, huh? I once read a comment Keith Giffen made about the death of Blue Beetle. He said he wasn’t mad about it, and that his only feelings on the matter were “I would’ve done it differently.” I think that’s all any fan can really say. “I would’ve done it differently.” Mark Waid once said something like “Comics is the only industry where 90% of your audience thinks that they can do it better than you.” It’s true.

Long, rambling introductions aside, DC screwed the pooch on the Batbooks when they made the main man overly angry, right? Well, what about the satellite titles? Catwoman went from a must-read book to “Peace out, homey!” all in the space of one issue for me. Batgirl has renounced her title and is pretty much a villain now.

I am okay with one of these things, but I do not like the other. Let us begin, then.
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Ha Ha I Am Blogging About Bad Comic Books

Let’s talk for a moment, you and me, about things I hate.

I hate Venom, for example. I’ve never been able to stand that schmuck, ever since the Spider-Man books turned into the Venom Show back in the ’90s. I hate Howard Mackie for being the embryonic stage of Chuck Austen… and I hate Chuck Austen, because all right-thinking people do. I hate Scott Lobdell, Frank Quitely’s pudgy Play-Doh people, and any book that Ashley Wood drew…

…but most of all, I hate licensed comics that’re written by somebody who hasn’t even touched the source material. I really hate it when I’m familiar–or in this case, scarily familiar–with that source material.

That means I hate the Resident Evil comic books.

Call the neighbors and lock up the kids, folks. It’s time for a bunch of pointless fanboy bitching.

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Well, it’s like this.

I love Spider-Man. I could give you five different reasons why your favorite hero is completely inferior to your Friendly Neighborhood Notaninsect. Your Superman is nothing. Behold, I teach you the Spider.

This is the Spider-Spotlight. Once a week or so, I’m going to headline a few of my very favorite Spider-artists, Spider-writers, and Spider-stories. Originally, this was just going to be an art feature, but comics are a visual medium, too, so the art and the words go hand in hand. I’ll do my level best to keep spoilers at a minimum, just in case i convince you to go out and pick up these books.

Don’t take this as a Best Of… list. It’s just some stuff I think is pretty awesome and that you should think is awesome, too, or else Slappy the Spider-Fairy is going to come down and eat your soul.

First up? Paul Jenkins and Humberto Ramos. Read the rest of this entry �