Aunts and Bungles

It's been a long time since I've been this excited to read a a comic book, and that's coming from a guy who gets excited enough about the new Walking Dead trade that he has to find unhealthy ways to manage arousal in order to go into the store and buy it without becoming tumescent.

Yesterday I was buying some Amazing Spider-Man back issues from a used book store that started carrying comics. I've talked some serious shit about comic stores, but I'll give them this: For the most part, the anal shopowners, though obnoxious, have their shit together and manage to keep things in order. This place, which probably makes more money selling shot glasses with hilarious slogans and knock-off violins (who the fuck is buying those, by the way? Does that really strike you as a wise idea?) than they do old comics, so the section is a little disoirganized. After spending ten minutes looking over an issue I couldn't find on my list before realizing that it wasn't there because the Spider-Man on the cover was actually a Spider-Girl, complete with different costumes and about as much femininity as can be draped in spider webs, I found this gem:





Now, I'm certain that something like this has not passed by the comics community unnoticed . By which I mean I'm sure there are 40,000 snarky blogs about it already. But hey, this is my snarky blog, and I'll do as I please.

The story begins with our friend Galactus, devourer of worlds. He's about ready to eat an entire inhabited planet (inhabited planets being the only thing that fuels him) when the planet's residents decide to blow themselves up. So in the first couple pages, we've got an entire planet, presumably a billion people, making the decision to commit suicide rather than being devoured.

I know that sounds like boring background nonsense, but it becomes important once we get to the giant space Twinkie.

Yeah.

The blast also killed Galactus' herald, so he has to find a new one and starts heading for Earth to do just that.

Cut to planet Earth where Peter Parker and Aunt May are at the circus. Without doing the math, I would estimate that 65% of Marvel comics published in the 70's and the 80's used the circus as an element in some way. Also at the circus, conincidentally sitting right next to Mr. Parker, is the Fantastic 4, including Franklin Richards, the son of Sue and Reed Richards.

Now, why a boy who grew up with a stretch man, a rock man who could lift a barge, a man who can fly around in fire that is always burning without consuming him, and a woman who can become invisible, why a boy who grew up with that would have any appreciation for the circus is pretty much beyond me. He lives in a world where mole men attack and cosmic rays are a thing. This seems to be above and beyond the circus on every level other than the enslavement of elephants, whichcircus people treat like go karts.

Regardless, the Fantastic 4 gets a call and has to leave. Franklin wants to stay and watch the circus. Auny May, bothersome old biddy that she is, says that she would be happy to watch the boy. Sue Storm isn't apt to leave her son with a strange woman, no matter how old she may be and how tight her hair bun might be pulled. However, Spider-Man shows up and vouches for Aunt May. His identity is secret, they don't know how he could possibly know about her, and she barely hides her disdain for Spider-Man, but that's good enough. To the Pogo Plane!

Of course, just as the FF leave with Spider-Man in tow, Galactus shows up and picks Franklin Richards to be his new herald. Springing into action with surprising gymnastic aplomb, Aunt May dives in front of...the magic rays that turn someone into a Galactus herald(?) and turns into...


I have to say, I think Galactus is headed for a serious discrimination lawsuit of some kind here. Why would his herald need to be transformed into a babe in a skin-tight getup? I think if the job is flying through space and letting people know their planet is going to be eaten, it could be Danny Devito. Aerodynamics are of no concern where there is no air to dynamic.

On the plus, I'm pretty sure that I now have an explanation for Helen Mirren.


Galactus tells Golden Oldie that it's time to get her newly tightened ass in gear and find a planet that's good eating, but before she can go Franklin Richards makes a suggestion:


At first I thought this was a page added in, one of those Hostess ads they would do, one-page comics where Dr. Octopus would be foiled only by his abiding love for gas station pastries. In fact, it would be pretty awesome to recreate those ads, but instead of having them be their own comic, disguise them to look like a continuation of the comic the reader is looking at which ends with someone saying the phrase "fruity deliciousness." Sort of like how you'll read an Esquire article about the best watches and in the middle some asshole sticks in an ad for a watch that is suspiciously similar in layout and coloring to the actual article. I suspect play MOST FOUL, Esquire.

Galactus eats the Twinkie. Now, in terms of scale, this would be like me eating a Twinkie that was about the size of...hmm...a Twinkie that could fit in my pee hole, let's say, which is smaller than a Tic-Tac. I know this based on a failed Tic-Tac-based, pre-oral-sex freshening-up tactic that didn't quite work out.

Enter one of my least favorite characters: Goofy Galactus.

Okay, he has bad decision-making skills when it comes to headgear, and he is in purple, which is not a respectable male color. But he does eat inhabited planets to live, a subject which has incredible depth that has only really been explored by the animated Transformers feature film. So when you goof-itize him, it kills it for me just a little bit.

So at this point Golden Oldie is scouring the globe to find more Twinkies, enough to satisfy Galactus. Instead of going to, I don't know, a FACTORY she goes door-to-door collecting the Twinkies people have. She stops at her boyfriend's house where they have this discussion:


Alright, she's been Golden Oldie for about ten minutes at this point, and the only thing she's lost is the politeness that previously kept her from rummaging in other peoples' cupboards for snacks and the opportunity to see a clown drive an elephant in a circle. Oh, and her oldness. So I guess this comic DOES address the age-old question "Would you trade in your manners for minor rudeness in order to live forever with superpowers?"

Of course, the pee-hole-sized snacks aren't enough in any quantity, so Golden Oldie has to head into outer space in search of inhabited planets. Instead, she finds a giant space Twinkie that was created by this Doughboy/Michelin Man hybrid who was exiled from his planet because they thought his idea of putting cream inside sponge cake was insane. Which it is, however on the insanity scale I find it relatively harmless. If I can choose to give a criminal a shiv or a Wilton wand, I know which way I'll go.





Something about the Michelin Doughboy does seem a little off, though, besides the crazy eyes, and I think I figured out what it is: I can accept that you made a giant space Twinkie, but why in the name of all that is holy would you need to shrinkwrap it, and how would one even go about it?



Fortunatley, Galactus shows up, Golden Oldie hooks up the Doughboy as the new herald of Galactus (proving my point about Danny Devito as a viable candidate) and the two head off towards domestic bliss.

Oh, also, Franklin Richards absorbs Aunt May's power so that everything is back to normal.

Then we have the final page, which reads like a storyboard for the movie Inception, dreams inside dreams inside dreams.


Peter Parker wakes up and says, What a terrible nightmare. Then, an editor at Marvel wakes up from THAT dream and does the same thing. Then, the editor-in-chief wakes up from THAT dream. This continues down through Stan Lee, after which it circles back around, Galactus wakes up, and asks his hearld, Nova, to get him a warm glass of milk. Then, the readers wake up collectively in their homes and think, oh thank goodness, it was only a dream.

Yeah, thank goodness it was only a dream. It's always been a dream of mine to buy a comic book that had no grounding in reality, no sense, and that, based on the knockoff name, even the Twinkie corporation felt was a little too off-base to advertise in. A company that mixes chemicals to make phallic spongebread n' cream products felt that this comic book was too left field for them.

What did we learn?

We learned that the Twinkie is a food with the nutritional value to power not just a man, but a living manifestation of the elements themselves. We learned that even the oldest of the olds can be transformed into a hot babe with the mere application of cosmic powers and the removal of her pupils. We heard a cautionary tale about baking taken too far, a lesson that could be applied to numerous boutique cupcake shops and Food Network programming slots. We learned that some companies really SHOULD implement mandatory drug testing.

But most of all, we learned that Googling "helen mirren" with safesearch off is a great way to temper the disappointment of a crappy comic book.

We went from planetwide suicide to giant space Twinkie to very old woman in a bikini in a couple dozen pages. The Power Cosmic truly does some amazing things. Including the two worst panels I've ever seen if you take the dialogue out of context. I'll let you decide which is worse.

The Horror!

This book came across my desk this week, and holy crap is it a good flipper. I don't know that it would be a good read, although it could only be SO bad, but it's the perfect thing to look at while talking to someone on the phone and allowing your mind to drift into a world where men are eaten by caterpillars.

Some highlights?

Can I just say, I hate this conceit? Not the conceit where the newspaper is used to explain exactly what's going on. I mean, I hate that too. The newspaper never has anything relevant to real life in it. Whenever I break up with a girlfriend, it just says that some Middle Eastern country exploded into violence, not that some Middle Eastern country exploded into EMOTIONAL violence.

No, the thing I'm opposed to is a newspaper like this blowing down the street. I don't hoard too much shit, but believe me, I would hang onto a newspaper with the headline WEREWOLF STRIKES AGAIN!


What happens at 8:30 PM? I don't know. Usually not much. But it looks like this ghoul has already managed to sever someone's head and install it as the ringer inside a bell. He may be evil, but he is very industrious, which is an admirable quality.



Okay, I'm not normally a fan of athletes who wear James-Worthy-style protective eyewear, but if you're a cyclops, protective eyewear is a must, ESPECIALLY WHEN FIGHTING. You can probably kick the guy's ass, but was it worth losing your only eye?


While we're on the topic of disabilities, how much does it suck to be a skeletonized demon ghost and still be stuck in a wheelchair? Seriously, it's not like there's muscles and veins and stuff powering your arms, so why wouldn't your legs work?



Ah, yes. We all know the evil legend of Caterpillar House. If someone leads with the tagline, "Can you survive the horror of..." I almost always answer no. Demon House, Hell House, Scary Bungalow, whatever. But Caterpillar House, that amount of horror I think I could survive. Plus, if you wait long enough, Caterpillar House just turns into Butterfly Pavilion, which is not only survivable but delightful.



Can I just say that I really, REALLY miss this kind of vampire, the kind that looks like someone who would do things like, I don't know, roam the countryside looking for human blood? I mean, how come Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise were picked to be vampires instead of Mickey Rourke and Christopher from the Sopranos? Enough with the romance, body waxes, and eyebrow maintenance already.

Capable

If you're anything like me (an awful human) you've often wondered how exactly one might go about drawing a handicapped gentleman. If you're normal, you've probably thought about it at least once or twice, I assume, as opposed to spending hours a day analyzing pictures, tacking them to dry erase boards, and connecting them with red lines.

Here's a handicapped fellow from the third Chew trade.

So I guess the short answer is basically drawing a normal guy with altered proportions and circles around his eyes that make him look kind of sickly. And suspenders. Suspenders are really the key here, I think.

Incognito and It Feels Bad to Be Good

Reading Incognito, which was pretty not bad, DID remind me of a trend that I remember flaring up sometime during the 90's and which may never have gone away: Making bad guys into good guys.

For me, most memorable was Venom from the Spider-Man comics. It appeared that someone at Marvel had the following thought process:

A: People like this Venom character.

B: People ALSO like our superhero characters.

C: If Venom were a superhero, he would be liked EVEN MORE.

What he never got to was:

D: Perhaps being a villain is part of his appeal, and therefore his appeal would go away if he had to become a good guy.

Not to mention the fact that they always had to come up with some bizarre reasoning for bad guys to become good guys. Usually they were kind of tricked into it, and then there would be one of two lines delivered:

A: "Well, I guess I'm a good guy, but only because it's convenient for me today, so don't expect any continuity-changing shit to go down."

B: "Huh. You know, it just never occurred to me that doing good stuff would feel this good. Nobody ever gave me the chance to do good before. I hope this doesn't end in a misunderstanding with law enforcement that makes me default back to being a bad guy again really quickly and easily."

Yeah, this is what I wanted, Spider-Man who refers to himself in the plural. Real fun.

Frank Miller Occupies the Internets

Frank Miller, old coot, has made some people a tad bit pissed off with his rant about the whole occupy Wall Street, % thing. Some choice quotes:

“Occupy” is nothing short of a clumsy, poorly-expressed attempt at anarchy, to the extent that the “movement” – HAH! Some “movement”, except if the word “bowel” is attached - is anything more than an ugly fashion statement by a bunch of iPhone, iPad wielding spoiled brats who should stop getting in the way of working people and find jobs for themselves.

In the name of decency, go home to your parents, you losers. Go back to your mommas’ basements and play with your Lords Of Warcraft.

Or better yet, enlist for the real thing. Maybe our military could whip some of you into shape.

They might not let you babies keep your iPhones, though. Try to soldier on.

Okay, wow.

This whole thing has caused some Miller backlash, although I don't think it's warranted, the reason being nothing he's written in the last decade or so has really been of interest anyway. However, I think people are taking it too far. Lest we forget:

To get my personal politics out of the way, I DO disagree with him. Frankly, I don't think that the phrase "get a job" is really a rational or considered response to any sort of problem. And I think someone else put it best, "I'm more apt to believe that 1% of the population is greedy than I am to believe that 99% is lazy." However, I don't really understand the purpose of standing around outside of places with signs. I don't think that the richest people are really bothered by the fact that they are rich. I don't think awareness is really the problem. It doesn't matter how aware someone is if they don't give a shit. To be blunt, I have very little respect for peaceful protest because I think it's ineffective. We've ascribed a sort of honor to protesting peacefully, but I think that's a social more we've created so that people stop smashing shit. If you look at the sit-ins used by Gandhi or the Civil Rights movement, they didn't fistfight anyone, but they effectively shut down a business, which is still a way of forcing someone to change. The modern version would be to sit INSIDE a financial institution, rendering it useless.

To be short and comics-related about it, I don't really agree with Miller's politics.

Regardless, Frank Miller has done some of my all-time favorite shit. I'm not going to pretend that his batting average is perfect, but I'll take a writer who produces 5-10 classic books over one who puts out 100 forgettable ones. You hear me, Ron Marz?

Honestly, I have no idea why anyone really gives a shit about what Frank Miller says about the whole thing, not because I think he's a wholesale idiot but because his job, his profession, is writing comics where a dude gets his crank pulled off. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but the road from crank-yanking to political commentary isn't a clear one to me.

But this is how this shit works nowadays. Back when, your Frank Millers would have probably been fairly quiet about their politics. But once you start writing a blog, you start a dialogue with the world that you imagine both sides of, so if you type about politics, it's because you're wanting someone to ask you about politics. Blogging just removes the need to be asked.

So am I going to throw out my treasured copy of Dark Knight?

Hell no. Because if I was going to do that, I would have done it because he wrote Dark Knight Strikes Again, not because he told a bunch of people to get a job.

Dr. McNinja: Night Powers

The hilarious exploits of Dr. McNinja, his velociraptor-riding sidekick Gordito, and their nemesis: King Radical.

If you're not already interested, don't waste your time by reading further or asking me out on (more) dates. But DO check out the top moments from the life and times.

This collection was brought to you from the internet. Yes, McNinja is a webcomic available here. But honestly, I found reading it in book form to be much more satisfying.

McNinja feels like it's written like a traditional comic, then divvied up into daily pages. It's good stuff, and it's much better than a lot of daily strips which just don't reach the high levels of comedy you see here:

Not to mention the fact that the print edition includes small footnotes on every page. I'm not normally a footnote fan, and I think David Foster Wallace may, MAY, have realized what a mistake he was making with those when he did the deed. But these are pretty hilarious. Skipping them doesn't kill the story, and they're short enough that they don't kill the momentum. Some highlights:

"So step one is walk down by the docks with your shirt off."

"You may notice that the world of Dr. McNinja is very similar to that of video-game shooters. Flammable barrels are everywhere."

"My dad used to fly a jet like this one, and I asked him about what would really happen in this situation, but in the end I still just went with what I thought would be coolest."

"Whoever determined the spelling for 'pterodactyl' is kind of a jerk."

"Punching dinosaurs can quickly become an addiction."

"I don't even know if spider webs are flammable. Again, this is Zelda basically steering this comic."

"One kid on Legends of the Hidden Temple actually ran off the set when a temple guard got him. I would love to see that one."

"'You are an ugly horse.' Worse insult to a unicorn, or a person? Discuss."

Sweet Tooth and the Slowing Down of the Apocalypse

After finishing volume 3 of the Jeff Lemire series Sweet Tooth, I had a thought about apocalyptic comics and their relation to the decompressed storytelling that's all over the place these days.

These damn kids and their lack of compression.

Because I feel like I can talk about it more openly without spoiling anything, I'm going to talk about it in the context of the Walking Dead instead of Sweet Tooth, purely because you should really give Sweet Tooth a try, and I feel like if you haven't already gotten into the Walking Dead yet...sorry.

(By the way, if you want to learn what this decompression stuff is all about, read the awesome article here)

The Walking Dead has a tendency to oscillate between very fast-paced, intense storytelling where a main character might be shot one minute, then another main character the next, then possibly someone gets axed in the head. A couple issues later, we might get a long, drawn-out discussion of who the REAL monsters are.

The thing that I've noticed is this: As the physical environment contracts, the story decompresses, gets slower. An example in Walking Dead is the time that the characters spend in the prison. When they are locked away and safe, they spend a lot more time talking and discussing, less time dying and decapitating.

As the environment expands, for example in the moments as the characters flee the prison, the story becomes more compressed, a lot of shit happening in a short time.

I guess it's kind of a no-brainer when you think about it. Say you've got two pit bulls who want to do nothing more than kill each other. Put them in a gigantic office building and you've got time on your hands. Put them on a basketball court and we'll see action right off. Put them in a refrigerator box and there will be nothing BUT action.

The thing that bothers me most about decompression, because as a trade paperback reader it has less effect, is that sometimes it becomes difficult to establish a sense of time in a book.

Which brings us to Sweet Tooth.

Sweet Tooth shares a lot of similarities with Walking Dead in tone and the fact that we're talking about a post-apocalyptic situation. But what Walking Dead does a little better is let me know about how much time has passed. Sometimes it's clumsy, like, "Can you fucking believe we be in this bullshit for 8 months and 17 days?" or something along those lines. But I can live with it.

Sweet Tooth, with its accordion-like story, doesn't help out as much. Could be months, a year, maybe three hours. I really don't know, and it doesn't seem to be too important.

I can live with it to an extent, but the passage of time, which is fairly unimportant when you are IN the apocalyptic situation, is of importance when you are READING ABOUT it. In The Road by Cormac McCarthy, we don't get much exactness in anything, but we do see the seasons change a bit and time passes in terms of food consumed, how desperate things are getting, and the aging of the characters.

I guess it's just something to think about, how important time is in these apocalyptic stories despite the fact that I can't imagine it would matter to the characters at all.

Amazing Spider-Man Update: Kingpin Fashion Faux Pas

Every comic I read with the Kingpin in it makes absolutely sure to remind me that the Kingpin is not a big fat bastard. He is, in fact, SO muscular that he just appears to be a tubby bitch.

I guess it must be true in the world of the comics. Daredevil has claimed it, and Spider-Man has corroborated the fact, which is significant because, well, Daredevil can't see shit, so I wouldn't put him as my number one when it comes to picking a fatty out of a lineup.

But look at him! In what way does he not look like a big fat bastard? Since when has there been such a thing as a neck roll of muscle? And a double chin, also of muscle?

The other thing is that, because he's not actually a fatty, Spider-Man and friends get to constantly make fun of him for being a fatty. In one issue alone, I got Tubby, Fatty, and my personal favorite, Chubbins. I feel like we're being cheated here a little bit, like Marvel comics knows that by making him not fat, it is therefore okay for the jolly Spider-Man to call him fat without coming off as a bastard who is picking on the fat kid. They get to have their (multiple, multiple, frosting-layered) cakes and eat them too (naked on a bed while watching Oz DVDs).

Me? I'm not buying it.

Let's compare. Of these three, which two look most alike?




Now maybe the Kingpin exists in a world of comic book characters that have freakish powers and also freakish manifestations of said powers. The Thing is really strong, but his curse is that he looks like a rock man. The Human Torch has amazing powers, but his curse is constantly burning club skanks alive in the middle of the night. Mr. Fantastic is a stretchy guy whose intelligence makes it impossible to not come off as a dick. Sue Storm has invincibility and forcefield powers, but she's a woman. The world of Marvel comics is filled with these give/take propositions where you usually have to give up something to get something. Perhaps the Kingpin, in one of these unspoken deals, has given up fitting into a reasonable pair of pants as a downside to his super strength.

Speaking of said pants, I would, like to offer the Kingpin some of my patented fashion advice, being the helpful(snowman.com) guy that I am.

1: Bald is not slimming
When you're bald, your head looks smaller. Having a smaller head makes your body look bigger. This is the opposite side of the effect you see on models who look like they have huge heads because their bodies are so tiny. My advice is to pump up that pumpkin, either with hair, horribly poisonous injections, or a nice hat.

2: Double-breasted suits are a no-no for large men
In fact, they're pretty much a no-no for everyone except for Confederate generals and racist chicken magnates. In setting up two lines of buttons, you're setting up a large negative space right in the center of your gut. The eye is drawn here, and it makes the lines of the clothing seem much thicker.

3: Black is slimming. So guess what white is?
Maybe throw out the motorcycle cover you've been wearing as a coat, trade it in for something a little more fitting of a man of your stature, both physically and in terms of respect owed to you.

4: Don't forget about the legs
You're clearly a fit man, and this is a problem for many men. Spend the last fifteen minutes that you would normally spend on your arms on doing some leg raises, abductors, calf raises, and even some squats. You're a crime lord, not a female magician who does topless shows in Vegas, by which I mean the top-heavy body with skinny legs ain't working in your favor.

5: Purple Pants
I don't even know what to say about this. In terms of fashion, every man needs to ask himself, Can I pull off purple? You don't wear it ironically, which I appreciate. Nothing worse than an asshole in a pink shirt who is not pulling it off because you can tell he's constantly thinking about the fact that he's wearing a pink shirt. That said, you can offset your freakish body by dressing normally.

6: Lose the cravat
I feel like you're using your entire look to puff everything out, therefore disguising your body lines. But it looks like your suit has a built-in airbag that inflates to keep you away from day-old baked goods. Just because you aren't slim doesn't mean you can't wear items that are slimmING.

Looking good...

Kindle Fire and DC

Amazon and DC have announced that DC digital comics will be available exclusively for the Kindle Fire, their new...well, I don't know what exactly it is. Media tablet? Their new thing.

Shortly thereafter, Barnes & Noble announced that they will no longer carry DC books in their stores, including older stuff like Watchmen and the like.

So who did the right thing?

Okay, it's clear that both companies are only out for themselves. Amazon wants exclusivity to the point that their tablet is like a VIP room, just without the g-string women. Unless maybe they plan to carry back issues of Gen 13, in which case I would have a whole new understanding of what the fuck the point of this thing is.

Barnes & Noble can pretend to be on the side of the consumer, but the truth is that their Nook Color is just about the only thing that kept them going the way of Borders, and they want to defend their turf.

In this case, I'm coming down on the side of the big BN. It sucks because it will greatly reduce my consumerism, aka sitting at a table and reading shit for free. But I think that DC/Amazon made a move and BN was forced to react, sort of like when my girlfriend tickles me and I'm forced to diarrhea.

I think that Amazon might not understand the monthly comic-buying audience. Here, from what I can tell, are the three most common ways monthly readers get their shit:

1. Comic specialty shops.
2. Ordering directly.
3. Torrent.

That number 3 there is the really important one. Why in the hell would I buy a Kindle Fire when I could use whatever tablet I may have and read the entirety of Detective Comics for free? Or, as most torrentors discover, have them available to read and never, ever do so? Also free.

The Kindle Fire looks kind of rad, don't get me wrong, but I just can't picture someone saying, "Hey, comics are like $3 and I am sort of into those. You know what I would like to do? Spend a couple hundos to get a tablet, then pay for digital issues." You know what I would do with $199? Buy $199 worth of comics, which I would also then have the option of adding to a PHYSICAL collection, by the way. Yeah, I'm telling you right now, a digital comics collection is officially uncool. Completely, totally, not cool. And it never will be. A collection of files? What are you, an accountant?

All this publisher exclusivity is stupid, and who suffers? Readers. What's next, comic stores having to pick between publishers the way restaurants have to pick between Pepsi and Coke? Nobody is going to tell a waiter to fuck off when he says, "Pepsi okay?" but truthfully, Pepsi not okay. And if I order Amazing Spider-Man and someone says, "Legion of Superheroes okay?" I would absolutely say, "No. And fuck off."

Rather than trying to bury their books in a niche, publishers should be doing the work of making the best possible books. Going back to the Pepsi/Coke analogy, you can trap people in a restaurant, but when they go to the grocery store and choose, that's the real test of good product, and that's the market you should be capturing.

Write the best comics and it won't matter where you're exclusive. Quit making bullshit business moves, start writing.

Age of Apocalypse: Eh, Screw It

Remember this?

This was the biggest thing in X-comics during the mid-90's, no? It was all the rage, all the crossover action, and half the number of Wolverine hands. So you can imagine my excitement when I picked up the trades.

And my confusion when I finished the first one with a resounding, What the fuck is going on?

It was confusing as hell, and I figured out why.

Here is the suggested reading order from an excellent Age of Apocalypse web site:

1) X-Men: AoA One-Shot [3rd story]

02) X-Men Chronicles #1

03) X-Men Chronicles #2

04) Tales of the Age of Apocalypse #2

05) X-Man #minus 1

06) X-Man Annual '96

07) X-Men: AoA One-Shot [2nd story]

08) Tales of the Age of Apocalypse #1

09) X-Men: AoA One-Shot [1st story]

10) Blink #1

11) Blink #2

12) Blink #3

13) Blink #4

Here is the reading order of this first trade paperback, near as I can figure it:

1. X-Men Chronicles #1

2. Tales of the Age of Apocalypse #2

3. Tales of the Age of Apocalypse #1

4. X-Men Chronicles #2

5. X-Man -1

6. X-Man Annual ‘96

7. Blink #1

8. Blink #2

9. Blink #3

10. Blink #4

So, if we add the two pieces of data together, the reading order I was presented with, expressed numerically, is as follows:

2, 4, 8, 3, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13

The only issues remotely in order are the last four, and even those apparently exist outside the normal timeline. Here is the summary of those four from the aforementioned web site:

Blink’s own four issue limited series takes her amnesiac into the Negative Zone, from which she later returns after encountering Blaastar and Annihilus. The last three pages of issue #4 flash forward to the end of the Age of Apocalypse and show Blink getting teleported away from the timeline shortly before it was apparently destroyed.

So we've got a character I know nothing about, in the Negative zone, which would be an awesome name for a comic critique blog, by the way, where who knows what the hell is going on, and then a flash forward to the end of the Age of Apocalypse. If I may repeat that, a flash forward to the end of a 4-tbp series that I am currently in the first fourth of.

I know things were pretty chaotic, what with Apocalypse taking over the world and culling all non-mutants. But could we at least get the story in some kind of order? I mean, this shit is all mixed up anyway, so why not mix it up in a logical fashion?

Not to make things worse, but in looking up another summary, here's what I discovered happened "before" (pre in terms of timeline, possible post in terms of in-story revelation) the first issue I read:

The Age of Apocalypse came about as a result of a mistake made by Legion, the time travelling son of Xavier. Legion, suffering from feelings of abandonment and his bouts with schizophrenia, decided that if Magneto had not existed, Charles Xavier would have had more time for his son. To rectify this problem in his life, Legion went back in time 20 years to kill Erik Magnus Lensherr before he became Magneto. He accidentally took four X-Men back in time with him: Storm, Iceman, Psylocke and Bishop.

The trip through time temporarily wiped the memories of Legion and the X-Men, but eventually Legion remembered the reason for his presence there. He attacked Lensherr and Xavier, since Charles was standing right there at the time. Cable sent his mind back in time and was able to warn/remind Bishop of what Legion was about to do. Bishop, Storm, Psylocke and Iceman quickly move to help Lensherr and Xavier fight Legion, but they are not strong enough. Just as Legion was about to kill Lensherr with a Psi-Bolt, Xavier threw himself between them, and died. Since Xavier was Legion's father, Legion ceased to exist. The X-Men that were products of Xavier's training (Storm, Psylocke and Iceman) also cease to exist. The only ones left are Bishop, who wanders off, and Erik Lensherr, whose confused and shocked mind can only comprehend the fact that his best friend died to save him from a murderous mutant with awesome powers. The death of Xavier in the past rewrote history; since Xavier was not there to oppose him, Apocalypse was able to take control of the world.

At that point we arrive on the doorstep of what was generously called Issue 1.

Does this story exist in normal continuity? Honestly, I have no fucking idea. It all happened on an alternate Earth, and the events had very few effects on the Earth as we know it, although apparently Bishop absorbed some of his alternate-self memories and Genosha somehow learned...you know what? I don't give a fuck about accuracy here. The answer in a nutsack, is No.

As a reader of trades almost exclusively, this brings up the big problem with crossovers, as I see it. Most companies are unwilling to publish the entirety of a story in one sane, rational, logical, complete-ist volume. And sorry, but I'm not going to buy a Deadpool trade just to see what the hell he was up to during the Marvel Crossover Fuckfest 2011. I don't care about that character, and if he's only going to be preipherally involved, just leave him out. I don't need him.

Here's what I'm thinking, guys.

Instead of crossing everything over, essentially destroying the integrity of the storyline to jam everything together into one big story that is impossible to read because humans can't read three books simultaneously, how about you do your crossover series as an entirely separate series? You can have your Civil War and have Captain America eat it (a bullet) too. You can have a title called X-Men: Age of Apocalypse, and then use that to tell whatever insane nonsense you want in an order that doesn't require an advanced degree in quantum mechanics to derive.

And what about the assholes who say things like, "How can the Thing be fighting the Hulk in January's World War Hulk while also being on Saturn with the Fantastic Four?" Oh, it's simple. They can find their peace by going and fucking themselves because to assume that all issues printed at the same time contain events occurring at the same time is a leap of faith so big that only Stilt Man could step over the gap. Or possibly any character with any sort of power or ability or high school track experience. *ahem*

Based on the amount of buzz at the time and the still-fervent fans online, it's clear that Age of Apocalypse was something special. But the form I find it in now is so unpalatable. It's like wedding cake left in the freezer for the first anniversary. We're all a little older, the initial excitement has ended, and rearranging the molecules has affected the whole in a way that makes me want to sign divorce papers so badly that I'm literally tasting it.

Demo

For those who haven't read this yet, the idea is that every issue was a short story about a young person with a different "power."

I say "power" instead of power or Power! because I guess some of these things would not really be qualified as powers. Eating human flesh? I mean, I guess it depends on the chef. You know that part in the Hannibal movie where he's just cooking up a piece of that dude's brain? I feel like brain meat would be rubbery. Not the most delicious part of a person. So eating that, that's a sort of power, I guess.

The thing wasn't up my alley because, frankly, I think I'm kind of over origin stories. I thought it was because I ended up reading the same origins so many times, and one of my fantasies is to have an amnesia that wipes only my knowledge of comics as it would allow me to enjoy them with a fresh eye. But it turns out, origin stories are just a little boring to me. Usually they're a necessary evil to get to the meat of the story, but Demo is kind of all origin.

It's not a bad idea, but I feel like comic book fans have seen about half of this whether it be Rising Stars or Rising Starts the TV Series aka Heroes.

So instead of talking more about how origins bore me, which is sort of MY origin and therefore also boring, I figured I'd write how I would handle a few of these situations differently if I were involved in them.

Issue 1 summary: A guy and a girl are running away. She is on mystery meds, and when she gets off them you get the idea some bad shit is going to happen.

Uh, baby, listen. I know you think that the meds you take to not make you crazy are really only because people are scared of your superpowers. But maybe you think that because you're crazy, which is why you are taking the meds. Now, I'm not calling you a liar. Sweetness, maybe you ARE the only person who has ever been prescribed medicines to somehow dampen superpowers for some reason. And I want to encourage you to explore that idea, do some soul-searching, while I see other people, preferably who are either not insane and on meds or having superpowers that could blow up someone's head. Either way.

Issue 2 summary: A girl can make anyone do anything she says. Or, to shorten:
Issue 2 summary: Preacher.

Okay, this is pretty serious. You seem sincere about being a normal kid, doing the right thing. So I can see why never saying a thing is appealing. But I think we can both see how someone pushes your buttons, and you hold it in so long that instead of saying something harmless like, I don't know, "Please leave immediately and never talk to me again" you end up telling them to put a grenade in their own mouth and pull the pin. I feel like there's room for compromise here.


Issue 3 summary: A (step)brother and sister come together at their father's funeral, where the brother points out that their family line is immortal. Also, creepy incestuous vibes run amok.

Look, if you want to bang your step brother, just do it. The more you debate it in your head, the creepier it is. The more you think about it, the harder it is to get drunk and "accidentally" do it. Five or six times.


Issue 8 summary: A guy finds his dead girlfriend and listens to a tape she made him, which is full of instructions and revelations.

Um, sorry, but a tape that doesn't include Phil Collins' "Against All Odds"? Even once? Pass.


Issue 12 summary: Some kind of poem thing(?)

[angrily flipping back to cover to check price after finishing the issue within 40 seconds of reading]

Superman v. Muhammad Ali: After Action Letter Written by Batman

[After Action Letter Written by Batman]

Superman-

After reviewing the after-action report collected in this volume, I have to make some critical points about how to handle these situations better in the future. But before I go on, I do want to express how extremely disappointed I am in you and your lack of forethought. You are better than this.

The proposition set forth by invading aliens, one that involves an Earth champion fighting their champion to decide the fate of the Earth, is not within your control. Also, Muhammad Ali being in the area when this proposition was made was also not within your control. I understand this. However, the moment the challenge was made, the ball was in your court, and you threw up a brick that could have kept a hundred little piggies safe from just about any wolf, with the possible exception of the Minnesota Timberwolves, whose rebounding is incredible this season. Those guys are playing out of their heads!

According to what I saw, the alien gave you 24 hours to prepare for battle. However, Ali claimed that he should be the one to represent Earth, the reason being that the alien homeworld, where the fight would take place, is lit by a red sun, the exact thing that takes away your superpowers and makes you a mortal man and nothing more.

Okay, for starters, you have about three weaknesses, and you need to stop broadcasting them. Muhammed Ali does not need to know that you are easily killed when exposed to red sun. Not that he would have much chance to get ahold of some…except when YOU TOOK HIM TO YOUR SECRET FORTRESS AND SPARRED WITH HIM UNDER A LIGHT BULB THAT MIMICS RED SUN.

This is a completely unnecessary risk.

Also, stop keeping things around that can kill you. If there are three things that can kill you, focus on eliminating those three things, not stashing them away in a glass candy dish like an old bitch who lost her love on the Titanic.

So, using some time-slowing device, you and Ali had a couple of weeks to prepare for the fight. He trained you to the best of his ability, and then the two of you fought under the red sun before the main event, Earth’s champion versus the alien champion.

Clark, I don’t need to tell you more than once that fighting two people back to back is not done in boxing. It is just not done. Even though Ali bested you, the energy he spent knocking your ass around the ring a few rounds would have been better spent on the real enemy. Not a wise move.

Secondly, if the alien race wanted to create an honorable boxing match, as they claimed, how does it work that their champion weighs 8,000 lbs. while ours is floating around 200? I know you probably don’t take in much boxing, but this is completely unorthodox, and you allowing Ali to enter such a mismatched fight is putting him at a high level of risk that is completely unacceptable. Next time, why not just have Jimmy Olsen fight, I don’t know, Anti-Monitor. A guy who takes pictures against a guy who absorbs universes? Hey, sounds like a good match.

Now, I understand you’re the feelgood guy, and learning about races and creeds coming together to defeat a common foe was really nice. But for the love of god, you let Ali figure out your secret identity!?

Unfortunately, this is not a situation that can be allowed to stand. I will be forced to pay a little visit Ali and slip him a memory-erasing drug, which will hopefully wipe this entire alien adventure from his mind. It is my sincerest hope that there are no lasting, debilitating effects. But if there are, know they are on your head. The secret of your alter-ego is too important to be known to any man, regardless of his ability to punch other men without being punched by them as much.

You need to start taking more responsibility for your actions and the actions of those you should be protecting.

Yours in Christ,

-B

Weathercraft by Jim Woodring

I guess most people who read a Jim Woodring book know what they're getting into. I guess this stuff is written for people who like to pour over every page of a book time and again, drawing meaning from little hints here and there.

I am not one of these people. I'm not sayin

g that a book that warrants re-reading is not a good one, but I find books that REQUIRE it to be unnecessarily challenging.

This book in particular is one that I can't help but find confusing. If forced at gunpoint to identify a theme, I would say, "Pig Man sticks his head into a hole, finds himself involved in odd tableau. Repeat."

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It's sort of the same way I feel about what they call Language Poetry. Take this excerpt from poet Jorie Graham:

The man held his hands to his heart as
he danced.
He slacked and swirled.
The doorways of the little city
blurred. Something
leaked out,
kindling the doorframes up,
making each entranceway
less true.

Okay, I know that means something. Definitely something. But I don't know what.

Not knowing is okay, but if I don't know SOMETHING I'm not really compelled to take another crack at the mystery, especially when the reward for solving said mystery is solving said mystery and nothing more. And it's not really like a logic problem because there is no right or wrong answer.

Which brings me back to Weathercraft: the book with no right answer.

There's something dirty and pretty about Jim Woodring's art, no doubt. Kind of like Crumb in some ways, but if the human characters in Crumb's stuff occupied a more fantastical world. I can appreciate

that. I can appreciate the level of detail in the drawings, and reading this book does give you a feeling if not a logical path to

retrace how you arrived at that feeling.

By the end, though, I just need more. For me, it's forgettable because there's nothing I really remember other than to say, Dude, that was fucked up.

I guess if you're into it, have a couple shrooms and go to town. This would be a pretty great book to do it with, although I don't know why you couldn't do it with a book that also has a more apparent story, like a Chris Ware book or something from Tony Millionaire.

I don't know what there is to say about this other than it's not bad, but it's definitely not for me.

Amazing Spider-Man Progress Update

Earlier this year I made it a goal to read every Amazing Spider-Man comic in existence.

So far, progress has been slow, I have to admit.

One question that comes to mind: Am I missing a lot reading these in black and white instead of color?

The Marvel Essential volumes (and DC Showcase, for that matter) were a great idea. WERE. Because, let's be serious, the story of Amazing Fantasy 15 is not worth the price. Neither are the first 55 issues or so with a couple exceptions, take my word for it on this one.

Something you notice about these early issues, a lot of this going on:

For some reason, it’s almost like they didn’t have comic books quite figured out yet. The words and the pictures, instead of complimenting each other, basically said the same stuff. You see Spider-Man webbing up the pin, AND he makes sure to remind us in the text as well. Not the most egregious comic book problem of all time, but it does make it clear (to me, at least) that they’re being written and drawn by separate people here.

There’s also a lot of this:

Okay, thanks for explaining the plan in detail. I did see a man with metal extend-y arms trashing the whole scene, but if I hadn’t known about the bulletproof glass and whatnot, I would have had an awful lot of questions about the realism of this scene, buddy.

Anyway, as someone who is far more a reader of comics than a collector, I was super-pumped when Marvel started putting out the Essential volumes in the mid 90’s. Finally I'd be able to read all those early stories without paying big bucks. Comics were no longer for those rich fucks who could afford to pay a couple million for a goddamn baseball every so often. That aspect of it was excellent, and well thought out if you ask me. The price to page ratio was pretty good for the time too. Long live the commie comic revolution.

Buuut, part of the issue is that I had never actually read these stories in color, so I never knew what I was missing. Potentially, I won't find out until issue 210, which according to my calculations, is when the essential volumes run out and I'll be in somewhat of a desert for most of the 200's. But comparing the color to the grayscale version of the same panels, you can see there’s something lost in the translation here.

The whole Essential thing, for me, is less a choice than a lack of options. There’s always the Marvel Omnibus, which is great except that it currently goes up to Amazing #38, about twenty issues behind where I’m at. That Marvel is always one step ahead/behind.

Progress is slow, but steady. And, breakthrough, I've given up on my self-image enough to read these volumes in the break room at work and the local Starbucks. Should help progress some.

I haven’t quit yet. With great power comes great responsibility. As any good rule, the converse is also true, and so in my case, with No power comes No responsibility, and therefore plenty of time to read comics.

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Plus, I got this rad patch which I will sew to my motorcycle jacket as soon as I finish. A Nerd merit badge, if you will. It's only a matter of time before my toughness is recognized and I am courted by any number of motorcycle gangs.

If that’s not motivation, pointing out to the world that I devoted a shitload of time to reading muddy-paged reprints of comics where the Scorpion looks like he’s wielding a giant dildo that was attached to his back for some reason, I don’t know what is.