Astonishing X-men #20

Adan: I’ve said it before, and I’ll continue to say it until it’s no longer true: Whedon’s all flash and no content. This is yet another issue in which a lot seems to happen, but it’s all just padding. There’s a couple of funny lines, some “Fuck Yeah” scenes, but what really happened in this issue? They landed on the Breakworld. That’s it. That’s all. Now, this isn’t anywhere near as bad as All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder being in the car for four Goddamn issues, but this certainly doesn’t carry enough plot for my tastes. And I know I won’t get a satisfying ending here because I haven’t gotten one for the past three arcs. Oh, where art thou, Fourth Coming? Are you stuck out in the desert? Do you need gas money?

Laura: Sorry, Joss Whedon. I can’t defend you anymore. Gifted was great, so I was willing to roll with the whole “Danger, the sentient Danger Room” arc even though it was (let’s be honest) kind of ridiculous and badly executed. But there comes a point when you can’t make excuses anymore, even for people you love, and you and I have reached that point today. Good ideas and snappy dialogue only take you so far if you can’t string them together cohesively, and after three read-throughs I still didn’t know what was going on half the time in this issue. You’re not even writing the Wonder Woman movie anymore, so stop phoning it in and pull yourself together, man. And seriously—if you pull this kind of crap on Runaways, it’s over between us.

Batman #663

Laura: Deep dark secret time, people: I’ve never been all that impressed with Grant Morrison. I mean, he’s a solid writer with innovative ideas and all, but I never thought he was the second coming of Alan Moore or anything. But I’m big enough to admit when I’m wrong, because Batman #663 is a bullet of exactly how wrong I was, shot directly between my eyes. The first thing you’ll notice when you open the book is all the words; it’s basically a short story with occasional pictures. Don’t be scared, though, because it’s spectacular. Morrison’s prose has never been so electric or unrelenting, pummeling the reader with one brutal, captivating image after another, like one long punch combination with brief pauses for chapter breaks. If you only buy one comic this week, buy this one. Hell, if you only buy one comic this month, it better have the Joker’s eyes bleeding down the cover, or you will have officially missed the boat. It is called the S.S. Awesome, and Batman #663 is your ticket to ride.

Adan: “If you only buy one comic this week, buy this one.” Too bad this isn’t actually a comic; it’s an illustrated short story (seriously, just ask Scott McCloud). But Laura’s not lying about this book being awesome. Because it is. However, she is lying about never being impressed by Grant Morrison. She’s always been impressed. Admitting it, however, means she loses some kind of street cred or something, so she hides her love behind a mask of sarcasm and big words. Not unlike the Batman himself, actually. Does that make me the Joker? Shit… I think I might be insane.

Laura: I’ve told you before that I felt iffy about Morrison, so I’ll have none of these accusations. Impugn my taste if you must, but never my honesty. I am like a sitar that only speaks the truth.

Casanova #7

Adan: This is the last issue of Casanova’s first album, as Matt Fraction calls them (not volume or arc or season), and boy is it a doozy. Last time we reviewed this book, I said Fraction could condense War and Peace into two pages and not lose any of the emotinal impact (unlike, say, Bendis, who would make it five times longer and lose all emotional impact). It’s still true. And we get a satisfying ending, too. It’s like there’s some places in this wide world where there are still people who know how to write comics. And one of those places is New Port Richey, Florida. I look forward to Casanova II: Electric Bugaloo. And Matt, I know this means next to nothing coming from some dude you don’t even know on the internets, but I’m genuinely sorry about the baby. That has to be rough.

Laura: This issue marks the close of Luxuria, the first “album” of Casanova. It’s a great issue to cap off a great series, but I’m not going to talk about that. I’m going to talk about the closing notes that Matt Fraction adds at the end, five pages of bold, intensely personal exposition that left me split open and stunned at how fucking brave he is. By the end of those five pages his prose had me so completely by the throat that he could have kept me there for another hundred. He talks a little about Casanova, but then starts cutting, and doesn’t stop till he hits bone. “That’s the sauce of this particular chaos, maybe. Belief, faith, sincerity, whatever you want to call it. You gotta fucking ache for it, sometimes; whatever you feel, feel big.” Thank you for this, Matt Fraction. Thank you for sticking a syringe of inspiration under my skin and pushing the plunger all the way in. You made me feel something beautiful on a day when I didn’t think it was possible to feel that way. And yes–you made me feel it big.

Franklin Richards: Lab Brat TP

Adan: It used to be that we comic geeks would have to swear up and down that not all comics were for kids. Nowadays, it seems like we have to swear up and down that comics for kids do exist out there (there’s another extra gory issue of Green Lantern Corps out this week with no kind of warning or rating on the cover). The Franklin Richards: Lab Brat trade by Chris Eliopoulos and Marc Sumerak is a perfect example of comics that are great for kids, and fun for adults. These shorts are sweet and funny, and should be purchased by all those mothers and fathers looking for some good wholesome fun for their kids to read (notice the complete lack of cursing in this review, eh? I can be child safe too).

Laura: That’s funny, because I think I actually picked up the cursing slack this week without meaning to. My feeling on swear words is similar to my feeling about the word “love”: don’t say it unless you really mean it, or it doesn’t mean anything. So I’m not going to say that I love Franklin Richards, but I will admit to liking it rather strongly. It is, as they say, fun for the whole family.

Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. #12

Adan: “A M.O.D.O.K. and a M.O.D.A.M. made sweet monkey love by the light of a rack of World of Warcraft servers, and I was the result!” Weep, pitiful humans. Weep that you might never see a line of dialogue like this ever again. Nextwave was one of the most absurd and best super-hero books in the world, and you all killed it. You killed it by not buying it, and now it’s gone. …Although, I think I heard somewhere that Warren Ellis said they’d keep doing minis with the Nextwave kids, but that’s no guarantee. I’m sad, and nothing can make me happy.

Laura: How about the fact that the first Nextwave trade also comes out in softcover today? How about a link to the Nextwave theme song, whose lyrics you may remember from the first issue director’s cut? Will that do it? Here you go, bro. The rest of you: please go read this. There is a Devil Dinosaur with a big gun and they drop-kick a baby MODOK and make fun of Captain America and things ’splode. And it is the last issue of Nextwave! Until the next one!

Punisher Presents Barracuda #1

Laura: People whom this issue might offend: Women, black people, Italians, Southerners, Hispanics, transsexuals, homosexuals, homophobes, and hemophiliacs. And maybe you. But me? I’m ok with it, mostly because it goes so far over the top it ends up on the other side. The book opens on the image of a unusually broad-shouldered prostitute walking out of an alley where Barracuda is zipping up his fly, with the title “A Mouth is a Mouth” running across the bottom of the page. That tells you most of what you need to know, and you’re either in or you’re out.

Adan: Remember when I said nothing could make me happy? I lied. This makes me happy. It’s so wonderfully wrong. It’s just so unapologetically sexist, racist, and any other -ist you can throw in there. And Christopher Walken guest stars, too. Barracuda, the tough SOB that fought Castle to a standstill in the storyarc that bears his name, is back, and he’s just as tough as he ever was. He’s missing an eye and four fingers from his right hand, but fuck it, he can still roll. Garth Ennis obviously has a knack for these kinds of stories with these kinds of characters that just can’t be topped. I’ll keep reading them because I’m a bad person, and so will you. And so will Christian conservatives, because they always need something new to blame shit on. Word on that.

PvP #31

Laura: For the uninitiated, PvP is a webcomic by Scott Kurtz that centers around the staff of a video game magazine and their loveable troll friend, Skull. PvP the comic is essentially PvP strips from the web… in a comic. So if you like the webcomic, you’ll enjoy this, as they are quite literally exactly the same.

Adan: Yeah, I like PvP a lot (in fact, I read it everyday online at www.pvponline.com). And, in an effort to support Scott Kurtz in his endeavors, I used to buy this book monthly. And then I realized I get mostly the same material online for free. Now, this does not mean you should not support Scott Kurtz, because you totally should. He’s a good guy and he deserves it. But you should do it by visiting his site everyday and buying his Truth, Justin, and the American Way mini, whose last issue also came out this week.

Rex Libris #7

Laura: How’s this for a premise: Rex Libris, the head librarian at Middleton Public Library, battles the forces of darkness and ignorance with a wide array of high-tech gadgetry, and of course, the formidable weapon that is his razor-sharp intellect. In this issue, our hero (who looks a little like a young Eugene Levy) ventures inside the pages of a library book in search of a lost patron. The book is titled the Compendio Illustrado de la Morfologia del Monstru del Paleozoico al Cenozoico del Cryptozoologisto Internacionalemente Aclamdo Juane E. Strozzi El Loco, a title referenced numerous times in its entirely, which makes me think that James Turner kind of hates his letterer. The page barriers in the Compendio are breaking down, releasing a menagerie of monsters from their proper classifications. What’s an action librarian to do?

Adan: You know what Rex Libris has that no other comic in the world has? Visicomboics. What is Visicomboics, you ask? Well, you can read the hilarious frontispiece on the inside front cover and it will all be explained. The rest of the comic is also hilarious. And even though I’d never read Rex Libris before, and the story is in media res (as the cinema geeks like to say) it wasn’t difficult to understand what was going on, so it’s got that going for it too. Pick it up, give it a try. It’s not like Civil War came out this week or anything, so you should have the extra cash.

Y the Last Man #54

Laura: The issues sees the return of the Fish & Bicycle theater troupe, whose name references the the infamous quote, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” (a stupid, counterproductive sentiment that you can attribute to Irina Dunn, not Gloria Steinem as popularly credited). Anyway, after failing at their cinematic ventures, the ladies of Fish & Bicycle turn to the medium of comics, which has “all the advantages of film and none of the drawbacks,” they gush. They decide to make a comic book about the sole survivor of a female gendercide—essentially, X the Last Woman, although the name they choose for it is actually far lamer. “It’s this quasi-femininst sci-fi thing. Very po-mo,” Yorick meta-intellectualizes about it. He’s kind of non-plussed by the idea, and at the moment, so am I. Also, I don’t buy “father-fuckin’” as an expletive, but you know, “A” for effort.

Adan: “Meh.” Yorick Brown is as unimpressed with the comic he reads in this issue as I am with this issue. It’s all so meta. This is a standalone story that centers on those travelling theater troupe girls who had Ampersand for a little while way back when. They try to make a movie and then they write a comic. The comic is, predictably, about a female-killing plague that leaves only one girl alive, along with her mare named Airheart. I repeat, “Meh.”