I’m calling it: Tim O’Neil wrote the review of the year with his review of the whole Rise and Fall and Rise of Green Arrow and Red Arrow Merry Christmas crapfest. A quote:

regardless of your best intentions we all get kind of rudderless and wish we could depend on some rock-jawed daddy figure like Hal Jordan to tell us what to do but really Hal Jordan is and has always been a douchebag and his rebelliousness never struck me as particularly principled so much as just erratic and kind of willful

There’s so much more love to be found over there, so click through and read the whole thing. It’s all true.

Tucker Stone compares baby killing at Marvel vs toddler killing at DC:

We at Marvel have always worked to support the trend towards ultraviolence–our readers like it, we like it, and you’d have to be fucking terrified of money to put a leash on Mark Millar. But we’ve always tried to remember that, at the end of the day, we’re making a product, a bit of fun, and that if we take it too seriously, if we try to make some kind of philosophical statement about justice or heroism, we’re going to end up with a dour, boring slice of poorly written shit.

How do you like your brutish and child-like extreme violence? Do you like it to look deeply into your eyes, desperately asking if you get it? Do you understand what has to happen to make a good man do wrong? Do you see how he can’t stop killing, as if he’s developed a taste for blood? Did you see those bloody socks? Do you get it? This is horrible, do you finally understand the stakes?

Or do you like it to be off the cuff violent, an act done simply because That’s What Bad Guys Do, something borrowed from Crank 2 or the best of crime cinema? No message, and no meaning beyond, “Yeah, this guy? He’s a douchebag.”

-Yo, tell ’em why you mad, son!
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music
-Yo, Esther, tell ’em why you mad!
-It was Justice League: Cry for Justice #7, a James Robinson/Mediocre Artist Medley joint. You know the one– everybody got mad about it last week.
-Esther was gonna get her hate on, but there were a few days between the point where that hand of hers was glowing with an awesome power, its burning grip telling her to defeat DC Comics.
-Instead of flipping DC a Shining Finger, we have a fairly measured, if frustrated talk about violence in comics.
-We’re talking about scale of violence, involving the family, “this time it’s personal!” and so on. Also how tragedy can turn a character toxic.
-I may mention a Tiny Crisis and make Esther cackle.
-We lighten it up at the end with some stuff we like about comics.
-Esther likes Brian Azzarello and Rags Morales’s First Wave #1.
-I like Viz’s One Piece 3in1 and accelerated release schedule.
-See you, space cowboy!

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