Hellboy: The Crooked Man #2

We got two horror masters working on this one. Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy, handles the writing, while Richard Corben takes care of the art. Hellboy, Tom Ferrell, and Cora Fisher are heading for a church in the Appalachian Mountains to bury Tom’s father. But the witches in the area — including the creepy, subterranean, monster-witches who live in the mines below — don’t want Cora to get away from them, so they hex her until her body explodes with hordes of eyeless albino frogs, bats, snakes and centipedes! Yuck! When Tom and Hellboy finally get to the church, they find it mostly ruined, but the blind preacher who runs it tells them that Cora’s soul was saved and that the church, as consecrated ground, is guaranteed safe ground from witches. But is it safe from the evil Crooked Man himself?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Very creepy. I mean, very, very creepy. Most Hellboy stories tend to have as much pulp action in ’em as horror, but this one, so far, is pretty pure scary stuff. Grand fun.

 

B.P.R.D.: The Warning #2

The entire B.P.R.D. team mobilizes to track down Gilfryd, the immortal mad sorceror who’s been invading Liz Sherman’s mind. They find his temple in the South American jungles, but they can’t find him. Or rather, he won’t let them find him. He puts the rest of the squad in a trance and appears to Liz alone, threatening to kill everyone if she doesn’t come with him. Everyone else gets caught completely flat-footed — Liz vanishes, Gilfryd gets away, and they even lose their transport planes to sabotage.

Verdict: I think I’ll give it a thumbs up. Nothing real fancy, but the story’s advancing nicely, and we still get some good creepy moments.

 

The Goon #27

We take a break from our regular storyline to get a trio of stories here. First, Eric Powell brings us the, umm, heartwarming story of a zombie momma and her horde of gross but devoted zombie-monster babies. After that, Kyle Holtz sends the Goon and Frankie on a quest to track down the monstrous and smelly Skunk Ape in its new disguise. Finally, Rebecca Sugar has a short story about the criminal mad scientist Dr. Alloy. And Eric’s letter column includes news about the cage fighter and roller derby team he’s sponsoring. Plus, bank managers in South Africa and China want Eric to send them some money!

Verdict: Baby, I do believe “The Goon” always gets a thumbs up. Funny, goofy, gross, and weird, so it’s got all the stuff I love.

Batman #679

In this issue: Batman’s craaaaaaazy.

He’s running around Gotham City dressed in a garish purple, red, and yellow version of his costume, he’s getting advice from Bat-Mite, who probably isn’t there at all, and he’s able to talk to gargoyles. He pulls out one of his teeth, because the Black Glove hid a tracing device there. Batman’s craaaaaazy.

But he’s able to capture and brutally interrogate Charlie Caligula from the Club of Villains, and Robin manages to elude Pierrot Lunaire and Springheeled Jack. The Knight and Squire are on the way, too. But Commissioner Gordon’s stuck in a deathtrapped Wayne Manor, Alfred has been tied up and beaten, Nightwing is scheduled for a lobotomy in Arkham Asylum, Jezebel Jet has been captured, and the Black Glove claims to be Thomas Wayne, Batman’s father. And the Joker is still waiting in the wings…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Utterly madcap lunacy. Does anyone know where Grant Morrison is going with this? Does Grant himself know? I reserve the right to hate where everything may wind up, but for now, wow, what a ride.

Captain Britain and MI:13 #4

Captain Britain has returned to life, pulled Excalibur from the stone, and has taken the battle to the evil super-magical Skrull. Dr. Faiza Hussain is trying in vain to save the life of the Black Knight. Pete Wisdom, Spitfire, and John the Skrull have been captured by the Skrulls in the other-dimensional Avalon. The Skrulls kill John for mouthing off, but Captain Britain manages to kill the head Skrull, returning magic to Avalon. At this point, all the supernatural evil in Britain is empowered to return to earth, but because Wisdom freed them, they grant him a single wish. Can he manage to use one wish to save everyone?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Excellent action all around. Good character bits for Faiza Hussain and Pete Wisdom. Haven’t really seen very much from Spitfire — hope that changes soon. Looks like the new team will have their hands full taking care of all those evil spirits, too. I’m disappointed that John the Skrull exited the scene so quickly, though.

Fantastic Four: True Story #1

This is what they’re talking about when they talk “high concept”: a bunch of fictional superheroes travel through the universe of fiction and encounter a bunch of characters from fiction.

Basically, everyone on earth has lost interest in fiction. No one’s reading books, no one’s watching movies. And actually, something pretty nasty is happening within fiction itself — we see something dark and scary threatening Tarzan, Riki-Tiki-Tavi, and the heroes of M.R. James’ ghost stories. So Reed Richards invents the science of, well, let’s call it fictionography and creates an imaginary fictocraft that the FF can use to travel into the world of fiction. Once there, they meet their guide, Dante Alighieri, writer of — and a character in — “The Divine Comedy.” And the team’s first mission? Fight off a horde of imps and gremlins to protect the Dashwood sisters from Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility.”

Verdict: Thumbs up. There are some really funny moments in here — Johnny Storm, Ben Grimm, and a defeated monster surrounded by mimes; Ben and Johnny’s quarrel condensed down to basic script descriptions; Reed happily dropping a “Behold!” on everyone; the FF not understanding why Dante refers to them as “comic book characters;” and Ben dropping Jane Austen quotes while clobbering monsters.

I do wish the story was moving a shade faster, and I’ve got to quibble about some of the selections for the FF’s favorite fictional works — Reed Richards loving the “Josie and the Pussycats” movie and Ben Grimm loving “Of Mice and Men” just don’t really make sense. Reed is so a sci-fi fan, if only to scavenge the plots for new things to invent, and Ben seems like the type to go for either Mack Bolan novels or old action pulps.

Manhunter #33

Kate, still trying to track down who’s killing scores of women in the Mexican deserts, gets ambushed in a pharamaceutical company by a bunch of superpowered security guards. Elsewhere, her mother and (I guess) dad learn that her (I guess) brother has gotten superpowers. Kate also runs into the Suicide Squad, not knowing that the Birds of Prey are on the way to bail her out.

Verdict: Thumbs down. I know I’m not as well acquainted with Manhunter’s backstory as I could be, but this story confused the tar outta me. Not real thrilled with the art either.

This is a story I just couldn’t resist.

Some of y’all (hopefully a lot of y’all — I don’t think I’m that much older than the rest of you) may remember a product of the 1970s called “Wacky Packages” — bubble gum trading cards and stickers that featured gross parodies of well-known consumer products. I used to love these when I was a kid — I’m sure they’ve all been thrown away long ago, but they were (to my high-toned grade-school mind) extremely funny and fun to stick on your bike or your notebook or your school desk.

And it turns out that one of the original “Wacky Packages” creators was Art Spiegelman, the guy who wrote and drew the Pulitzer-Prize-winning graphic novel “Maus”.

Not that Topps, or more specifically illustrator Art Spiegelman and writer Jay Lynch — goaded by Topps’ Woody Gelman and Len Brown — knew the import of the work. In the preface to the new book “Wacky Packages” (Abrams), a collection of the first seven series of the Topps cards, Spiegelman — yes, the same Art Spiegelman who won a Pulitzer Prize for “Maus” — remembers the creation of Wackies as being “a dream job,” but something that would probably be forgotten.

“It was all done as Part of a Day’s Work, much like the way early comic books were made: they certainly weren’t made as art, they weren’t sold as art, and they weren’t thought of as art,” he says in the book’s introduction. “Wacky Packages just formed an island of subversive underground culture in the surrounding sea of junk.”

It’s amazing that these are considered collectable now. I think if I had a package of these now… well, I’d probably just go stick ’em on my desk at work. Can’t go wrong with the classics…

 

Comic Book Comics #2

The comic book about this history of comic books continues. The creation of Captain America and his crushing workload cause Jack Kirby to spontaneously manifest the Kirby Style; Stanley Leiber becomes Stan Lee and makes Kirby want to kill him; most comics creators spend the war creating artwork and comics for the military; Walt Disney begins his slide into “Citizen Kane” style megalomania; Bert Christman dies in the war; romance comics become the big post-war craze; William Moulton Marston’s kinky sex life helps create Wonder Woman; Bill Gaines takes over EC Comics, recreates it as an edgy crime-and-horror shop, and sets himself up for a confrontation with Fredric Wertham and the U.S. Congress.

Verdict: Way, way thumbs up. The guys who revolutionized nonfiction comics with “Action Philosophers” are doing a bang-up job with this new effort. I hadn’t heard half of these stories before, and even the ones I already knew (William Marston was a very kinky boy, the kind you don’t take home to mother) got an extra boost by adding some more historical context.

And the cartooning is really great fun. There’s a ton of humor in every drawing, from the futuristic Archie gang to the hilarious twists and turns of romance comics to the many madcap adventures of Bill Gaines. Also lots of fun is the letter column in the back (No, seriously, even more good historical tidbits, some funny stuff, and some extra comics) and the section on the “World’s Greatest Comic Book Collection” with market values for some of the groundbreaking comics featured in the issue.

If you haven’t gotten it yet, go give it a try. Get better acquainted with yer hobby, why don’tcha?

 

Short answer? I have no idea.

But it is something I’ve been pondering. It’s absolutely certain we’ll see at least one more sequel in this franchise — after pulling down over $400 million in a little over three weeks, there’s no way Warner Brothers will let director Christopher Nolan or Christian Bale walk on this. But the big talk in movie circles is who the next Bat-villain will be.

Now let’s not talk actors — Nolan’s gotten great results by going with actors you’d never actually associate with the characters they played. Besides, anything you’re hearing now about Angelina Jolie or Johnny Depp is strictly scuttlebutt that almost certainly won’t come to pass.

So who are our possibilities?

I really doubt we’ll see the Joker or Two-Face make a return appearance. No one’s going to be dumb enough to try to fill Heath Ledger’s shoes for a sequel, and Harvey Dent’s dead. No, no weaseling out of this — no “Well, they didn’t take his pulse, we don’t know he’s in the coffin, he might be alive.” No, he’s dead. Bringing him back to life is a comic book trick, and Nolan isn’t playing these movies by comic book rules.

Nolan’s already said he dislikes the Penguin and doesn’t want him in a movie, so it’s a pretty sure bet we can rule him out.

Everyone keeps talking up the Riddler and Catwoman, but I don’t see it happening. They just don’t fit into the previous films’ mold. Ra’s al Ghul, Scarecrow, and the Joker all had big plans to change the face of Gotham City, and Riddler and Catwoman have never been that variety of crazy. Catwoman is a burglar, and Riddler is an obsessive-compulsive bank robber. They’re not “Destroy the City” types.

I also think we can rule out Batman’s more fantastical villains, like Mr. Freeze, Killer Croc, and Clayface. I think they’d make pretty interesting villains, but the movies have gone for a more realistic feel, and superscientific freeze guns, crocodilian mutants with superstrength, and amorphous shapeshifting blob-men just don’t fit into the movie’s universe, no matter how cool their stories may be.

I’m not sure that Harley Quinn would work without the Joker, but she might make a believable Joker substitute, with the right tweaks.

Poison Ivy and the Mad Hatter straddle the realistic/unrealistic barrier. With the right adjustments in their origins and powers, they might be workable.

Bane, Hush, and the Ventriloquist would have the right amount of realism on their side. Bane and Hush definitely have their hate on for Batman, and might be willing to hatch city-destroying schemes to get at him. The Ventriloquist has definitely got the craaaaazy workin’ for him, but I don’t know whether you could turn him into the type who wants to wreck large swaths of the city.

My picks, in order of preference? (1) The Ventriloquist — when three of your past four movie villains have been jam-packed with insanity sauce, I think Ventriloquist and his puppet Scarface are cracked enough to fit in just fine; (2) Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn — again, with the right tweaks, I could see them being great, and isn’t it time we saw some good Bat-villains who were female?; (3) Bane — not my favorite villain, but he’s got a good built-in storyline; (4) Hush — another who’s not my favorite, but he makes a pretty good anti-Batman; (5) Mad Hatter — his obsessions with Batman’s cowl and using mind control on Gothamites would be pretty good, but I worry that all the bizarre “Alice in Wonderland” stuff might make him too weird to be useable.

So there are my picks. What are yours?

Wow, what a week. I don’t know about y’all, but I’m really feeling like a little gratuitous comic-book violence would be just the thing I need to get my weekend started right. You guys know anywhere I can find some gratuitous comic-book violence around here? Maybe right here, ’cause it’s time for FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s dose of brutality comes from 2005’s JSA Classified #4 by Geoff Johns, Amanda Conner, and Jimmy Palmiotti: Power Girl vents her frustrations on the Psycho-Pirate’s gold-plated jaw:

 

 

 

Gesundheit!

Hmm, someone’s gonna have to get the extra-absorbent tissues to clean up this mess…

Huzzah! The air conditioner’s fixed! And my breath is minty-fresh!

Now on to the reviews!

Hulk #5

The Red Hulk kicks Thor’s butt, Iron Man and the Fantastic Four try to figure out if Doc Samson is really the Red Hulk, and A-Bomb (Rick Jones as the blue-skinned version of the Abomination) fishes the regular green Hulk out of San Francisco Bay.

Verdict: There’s not really much to the story, but I’m gonna give it a thumbs up. Ed McGuinness knows how to draw one heck of a slugfest. Conclusion of this storyline is next issue, so I assume they’ll reveal what faked-up and idiotic excuse they’ve dredged up to claim that Red Hulk is someone other than Doc Samson…

Teen Titans #61

Kid Devil and Blue Beetle team up to track down a supervillain called Shockwave. Kid Devil blames Shockwave for putting him on the outs with the rest of the Titans, while Beetle is after him because he’s targeting companies that used to be owned by Ted Kord, the previous Blue Beetle.

Verdict: Thumbs up. But mainly because a lot of the focus is on Blue Beetle, who’s just plain awesome.

Whooo dawg, the apartment is still cookin’ like an oven, and I feel like I been wrung out like a rag. The A/C is still dead, and taking cold showers and sleeping under fans didn’t really help me stay cool or sleep very well. So I don’t feel like reviewing any comics where happy things happen to happy people. I feel like reviewing comics where very, very, very bad things happen to people who weren’t very nice to begin with.

 

Crossed #0

A nice little prologue for Garth Ennis’ upcoming horror series. A pleasant evening out at the local diner suddenly turns into car crashes, plane crashes, a nuke, and bloody mass murder. This is basically a zombie story, except the butchers aren’t dead — they’re normal people who’ve caught some condition that turns them into gleefully psychotic killers. And the only way to tell them apart (aside from the severed body parts they tend to carry around and their evil, evil smiles) is the ugly red rash that forms a cross over their faces.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Mayhem and butchery? Gimme more o’ that. A nice claustrophobic, paranoid, ultra-violent beginning to the story. Can’t wait for the rest. Oh, and this is not a comic for kids. There is a great deal of violence and swearing and worse stuff that I’m not going to describe, because the head honchos here will protest. “You said you’d never use that word in combination with that word in describing that particular very rude act! Much less with a knife wound OR a kitten! For shame!” Fine, fine. Anyway, if you ain’t grown up enough to handle the rough stuff, don’t read it.

 

House of Mystery #4

Fig continues to try to adjust to her new life in the House of Mystery. She chats with a crazy ham enthusiast, fights with cranky Cress, and tries to beat up the house with a sledgehammer. Meanwhile, our spotlight story this issue is told by the punk witch princess Daphne — she tells about her flight from her witch-filled home dimension before the robotic invasion of the Thinking Man’s Army. To hide her properly, she, along with her bodyguard, a talking leopard named Floyd, gets teleported into a mundane world and deprived of her true name. To return home, all she has to do is kiss her true love and learn her true name. Unfortunately, she and Floyd have a great deal more fun just hacking up her boyfriends whenever they don’t make the cut.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The main story is a bit drab, but Daphne and Floyd are so fun and twisted and bloody and cynical, it pushes it straight over the top.

 

Hey, guess what?! My air conditioner’s gone kaput! Yay! Now I get to die of heatstroke inside my own apartment! Yay!

I may have to do a bit less blogging than normal if it doesn’t get fixed soon. I don’t think sweat is good for my keyboard.

Excuse me — gonna see if I can fit myself inside my refrigerator…