Comics V: Fox Force Five

[red snow]

Making another attempt at getting hold of my personal holy grail vol 2 of scalped. As I may have mentioned, I received a copy a couple of weeks ago after a year of casually searching only to discover it was in French. Luckily amazon gave me a refund on the grounds it was unusable due to not being fluent in French. I'm sure they had a laugh at that. Now I'm playing it safe and ordering from the USA as I'm sure they won't supply books in the tongue of those "cheese eating surrender monkeys" :)

I suspect the book will never quite live up to the effort of obtaining it.

[Lady Octarina]

People who read DC, I was wondering: is the current Green Arrow series worth buying? He's probably my favorite DC hero, and I read some v.3 issues that I liked. And what about Superman and Wonder Woman?

[Nephrite]

People who read DC, I was wondering: is the current Green Arrow series worth buying? He's probably my favorite DC hero, and I read some v.3 issues that I liked. And what about Superman and Wonder Woman?

Basically, you can start Green Arrow with issue #17. That's from last week. Lemire takes over. And the art makes biblical improvements. Everything before that was crap. Green crap.

Wonder Woman is DC's best book at the moment, IMO. Azzarello & Chiang are killing it. It's amazingly self-contained. They don't even namedrop other DC heroes. It has a great take on Greek gods.

Superman... eh. The Superman book was part of a carousel ride of ever changing creative teams and really nothing you need to soil you soul with. Lobdell took over a few months back, and it stabilized. It's not brilliant, but it's entertaining. Action Comics is Morrison's book that fluctuates from amazing to confusingly frustrating. The art is almost universally shit. It was like DC was either looking to sink one of their flagship books, or somebody at DC actually thinks that Rags Morales is A-list artist. Both options are valid.

I'd reccomend Morrison's book, but read it in one go. Cause it really only makes sense that way.

[red snow]

People who read DC, I was wondering: is the current Green Arrow series worth buying? He's probably my favorite DC hero, and I read some v.3 issues that I liked. And what about Superman and Wonder Woman?

Only read the first couple of new52 issues and wasn't impressed. Like Nephrite says it has a new creative team just started and it seems to divide between love and hate on reviews. Probably worth a shot or wait 3 months for the next creative team to take over. I think he is going to be in Johns JLA too.

Don't know if you read the older issues. I quite liked Kevin Smith and Judd Winnick's run but it went downhill when they did the whole one year later thing.

There's a comic based on the TV show too - no idea on the quality of that but it should be self contained at least.

I hope DC get their shit together for the Superman books before man of steel. I'm dumbfounded by what a mess they've made of him so far. Hopefully Snyder and Andy diggle can inject something into the franchise. I guess lobdell is having fun with his nonsense at least.

[Nephrite]

So Batman #17 leaked. Spoilers ahead.

It was a horrible, horrible comicbook by people who have been living like Buddha inside tall walls made of people telling them how brilliant they are.

But first a stroll down Memory Lane courtesy of me back in youthful Novemeber:

Anyway, putting my awesome dog aside, I can kind of guess how this will end. Joker's gonna get some kind of "moral" victory. Either by killing Alfred or Jason Todd or somebody we don't give a fuck about or maybe even nobody. And after he gets beaten to a pulp by Batman, who (of course) stops just seconds before killing him (cause heroes don't do that, I'm told) in a scene played out like the most original thing ever and like it never happened before and then proceeds to deliver a "touching" monologue to Batman about how he "destroyed" his family cause their relationship is strained and the next Thanksgiving is gonna be really awkward. Cue mad laugh.

Fucking. Called. It.

Big loss of the whole Death of the Family arc? The sidekicks don't show up for dinner at the mansion. I'm not fucking kidding.

Blue Balls: The Comics

No one died. No one was permanently scarred. Alfred actually looks younger, but let's attribute that to the fact that Capullo can only draw one face: A guy on a epic high, but slightly sleepy.

But, seriously the fucking pretentiousness of this story-arc. On the first page Snyder rips of Miller, Moore & Morrison at the same time. I mean it's a fucking achievement, I'll give him that. And it fucking escalates from there. Joker keeps on harping on about the two of them being in love and actually calls out Batman on how stupid his moral code really is. Then he reveals that he jokerized Alfred and cut off the faces of the members of the Bat-family as a true and fine continuation of his new grimdark persona. Last issue he made a tapestry out of human bodies that shoved him and Batman fighting in their many adventures. And now he played surgeon.

Well, not really. Killing cops is okay. But ruining Dick Grayson's good looks? Fuck no! Joker has a moral code as well. The beauty code.

He did create perfect replicas of their faces, so that they only think he cut their faces off. Add that to his list of talents. He's a considerate gangly fellow.

So, he pretends he did it, cause they are soft and not deep & metaphorical as him and Batman are.

Then after a series of events that could only happen if everything goes according to a special sequence with no deviations, Batman goes after the Joker.

But, remember that two-headed cat? Part of some kind of idiotic metaphor Snyder dreamt up in his delusional fever dreams of being better than Moore? Yeah, that thing explodes and everybody gets jokerzired. There was enough gas in a kitten's head to fill a cave. And if you are counting, that means that at this point Alfred got jokerized twice.

Batman and Joker fight and Joker has a special axe that looks like the Bat-symbol. He is also a expert blacksmith, I guess.

Then it looks like Batman is gonna kill the Joker. He pulls out a crowbar from somewhere. Get it? Death In the Family -- Death OF the Family? Deep.

But Joker escapes and almost dies by falling from one of these underground waterfalls that Gotham is littered with. But Batman saves him and gives the most decompressed speech in the history of comics. Seriously, this thing lasts forever. The gist of it is that Batman knows Joker's identity and his family and social security number and that he loves that Snickers cake from that little café in that small coastal town of Crikvenica, Croatia and just as he is about to tell it with a sentence that goes on for 3 fuckin' pages, Joker gets himself free and falls down the waterfall and dies.

Nah, just fucking with you. Joker's superpower is surviving falls from great heights. He's just missing as always.

Anyway, in the meantime the family was fighting each other while being jokerized, but then they just sat on the floor and giggled. Which is what I did after reading this fucking thing.

I guess be cause Alfred got gassed twice it... This is so fucking stupid, it... reversed the effect of the gas and he stopped them from killing each other. Snyder, master chemist. So if you ever get poisoned, just take more poison and that will cure you.

Then we get a flashback that reveals that one time in the past Bruce Wayne visited Arkham cause he made a donation for them to buy locks for the front gate... just kidding it was a new wing with no doors at all. Or walls. It was just a meadow with a phone so that the escaped inmates may call the cab company.

Anyway, he was left alone in front of Joker's cell (that's Arkham security for you, folks) and basically revealed his fucking identity to the goddamn Joker. Joker of course didn't care, cause there was never a cliché that Scott Snyder didn't hit with his car laughing like a goddamn lunatic and stroking his… ego.

So it turns out Batman and Joker have been playing this dumb game like two insane fetishists in a complex role-playing scenario.

And now Bruce has to pay the price of eating alone. "Heartbreaking loss" as they called it in the solicits. Alfred isn't even fucking blind. We don't even know why they don't show up. Apparently Joker whispered something to them. But we are not told. Just like we are not told if Batman actually knows the Joker's identity.

And why do they actually believe anything a murderous clown is saying to them?

Also, the issue is called "The Punchline". So… Joker's gas that he used on Batman's family had one unidentified radioactive element: Dubnium. Or Hahnium. Element symbol: Ha.

DO YOU GET IT PEOPLE? ARE YOUR EYES OPEN NOW? THIS IS WHY SCOTT SNYDER IS THE BEST WRITER IN THE COMICS NOW AND FOREVER! THE TIGER-FORCE AT THE CORE OF ALL THINGS!

He must've patted himself on the back when he came up with this. It's a miracle he didn't spell this out in the interviews.

To be fair, I'll give him one amazing symbolism. At the end when Bruce is staring at the Ha on the computer screen a fly lands on the screen. Cause, flies always land on shit.

This is going to win IGN's Comic of the year in a year. I just know it.