Cable/Deadpool #36

Adan: There is no Cable in this issue. It’s all Deadpool, and that’s the way I like it. After the spanking Deadpool received when Cable made a fool out out of him on international TV in order to discredit the Registration Act, Deadpool’s been a man on a mission trying to prove that he actually is an awesome merc. He enlists the aid of the Taskmaster (who’s recently been humiliated by Moon Knight). This book has been pretty funny since it’s inception (though not as funny as Joe Kelly’s Deadpool or Priest’s Black Panther) and it only gets funnier without the half of the buddy movie who has a savior complex.

Laura: Although I usually enjoy the Cable/Deadpool dynamic, it’s nice to see my favorite mercenary cutting loose without his usual foil. Deadpool concocts a wonderfully harebrained scheme to regain his lost stature, which manages to prove that he is dangerous and crazy, though perhaps lacking in business acumen.

Fantastic Four #542

Adan: Reed enlists the Thinker to check his math, which predicts the future, while Johnny tries to get Ben back to the states from his sojourn in France. Okay, math that predicts the future, your sole reason for being pro-Reg, and you haven’t gotten anyone to check it yet!? What the hell’s the matter with you? You really are the dumbest genius in the world! And Thing, how can you willingly stay in France? Why not go to less obnoxious places like Spain or Italy, or head out of the Western world entirely and hit Iraq (I hear they could use the help there), India, or Malaysia. Those are all fine places to hang out (except for Iraq) while you wait for this Civil War nonsense to finish up already. Those are some of the places I’d go if I could to wait this thing out.

Laura: This is a particularly bad issue of Fantastic Four, wherein we learn that math is actually magic, and The Right Thing to Do can always be predicted by equations. I did not know that. More painfully, Reed Richards and Johnny play talking heads and rehash the same simplistic, repetitive arguments that have been repeated ad nauseum since this whole godforsaken crossover started last summer. Civil War has basically been like a six month episode of The McLaughlin Group interrupted by occasional splash pages, and I’m sick of it. Stop pretending that you’re really dealing with complicated sociopolitical issues, stop pretending that you’re a tour de force, and above all, stop pretending that you mean something, Civil War, because you don’t.

Helmet of Fate: Detective Chimp #1

Adan: MONKEYS!!! I love monkeys. I especially love detective monkeys who can talk and who dress like Sherlock Holmes (which is why I’m seemingly single-handedly making sure people read Shadowpact. Are you reading Shadowpact? ‘Cause you should be), and this one-shot showcases both of those things (I say one-shot ’cause that’s what DC says, but it’s really issue one of a five-part mini). Detective Chimp talks and solves crimes and then the Helmet of Fate finds him once again. However, the Helmet has been apparently traveling through space for the last year. No mention of Ralph Dibny and his quest to resurrect his wife that is currently going on in the pages of 52.

Laura: Detective Chimp doesn’t really want to deal with the Helmet of Fate, so he has it thrown out into space so hard that it bounces off the edge of the universe (?) and ricochets back to Earth a year later, to the precise spot where he happens to be standing at that moment, and hits him on the head. Which is the most ridiculously improbable sequence of events ever, but that just means it’s fate. And so, Detective Chimp finally accepts his destiny and dons the helmet, making a priceless “oh” face of monkey revelation as the secrets of the universe reveal themselves. Hijinks ensue.

Lady Death: Lost Souls #2

Adan: I hate to admit it, but Lady Death is not the worst comic in the world (at least this one isn’t). Yes, all the characters are fighting demons and such in clothes that could hardly be called such, but at least said clothes don’t magically disappear to reveal ample bosoms and freshly-shaved pubic areas. There is a plot (it’s not very good, but it’s there) and it’s about a bad guy named Sinner who’s trying to get some powerful artifacts by using the Seven Deadly Sins, which he created a millenia ago. Listen, that’s not important. What’s important is that while this book sucks a lot, it doesn’t suck as much as Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose. People who read Lady Death are slightly higher on the ladder than people who read Tarot. And frankly, the worst part about this book is the ridiculous amount of covers. We can’t stick to a regular number like three or four? Why do you have to always do a minimum of five? Also, if you don’t want that pesky plot to get in the way of your cheesecake, then pick up Lady Death: Warrior Temptress which features a bunch of pin-ups featuring Lady Death in various guises like Barbarian, Brave, and Mermaid, to name a few.

Laura: I’m so sorry I read this book. I barely even have the will to make fun of it. All right: there’s this guy that seems to control the seven deadly sins. His name is Sinner (yup!). Lady Death and her band of gothic hoes are fighting him in Jerusalem during the Crusades, and they all predictably fall prey to one deadly sin or another. One of the women is possessed by Lust as an excuse to lez it up, and then other things happen, but it doesn’t matter. It’s all just worthless and bad. Tarot at least is so ridiculously bad that it’s funny, but there’s nothing funny about Lady Death. A pox on you, Lady Death, and all five million of your stupid covers.

Love As A Foreign Language, Vol 6

Adan: A funny, heartwarming story about a Canadian guy lives and works in Korea, yet hates the place until he falls in love. Joel and Hana finally consumate their love (uh, metaphorically speaking) just in time to for Joel’s visa to expire and the English school to be shut down. Dun-dun-dun! But before that, Joel and Hana behave like people just falling in love always do: sweet, sappy, and ridiculously cute. If you haven’t read the previous five volumes, do yourself a favor and pick them up. They’re still widely available and super good. Plus, this volume will make more sense.

Laura: How can you consummate love metaphorically? Are they fucking each other on a spiritual plane? Regardless, this book wasn’t made available to me so I haven’t actually read it, but it sounds like it’s right up my alley. I used to teach EFL in Japan and I’m pretty sure this would resonate in a big way, and probably charm the pants off me. Metaphorically speaking.

The Spirit #2

Adan: Whoever said the Spirit could not be written by anybody besides the great Will Eisner was wrong. This is the third issue (counting Jeph Loeb’s Batman/The Spirit one-shot) in a row that has been awesome! Each issue thus far has also been self-contained, so if you haven’t read any of the other books, fret not. Pick them up later, but this is a book you have to be reading. Darwyn Cooke and J. Bone are putting together a top-notch read and if they don’t win scores of awards for this thing, somebody fucked up.

Laura: Yeah, the new Spirit gets a big thumbs up. It’s got a classic, but not antiquated feel that manages to move between slapstick humor and heartbreaking drama without ever feeling disjointed. In this issue we learn a little bit more about the sultry P’Gell, an intelligent, elegant femme fatale whose ilk we don’t see often enough in comics. Female sexuality doesn’t always have to be about wearing thongs and slutting it up, and it’s nice to see something a little classier for once, outside of the usual virgin/whore dyad that I’ve never really enjoyed.

I’d also like to take a moment and comment on the Wii advertisement in here that’s designed to look like a comic book, so that you get that split second of disorientation wondering how this 15-year-old boy and his Wii remote fit into the Spirit storyline. Memo to Nintendo: please try to have someone who was a kid sometime in the last 30 years write your copy. You’re going to look back on these ads someday with the same kind of embarrassment and chagrin I hope you now feel about that Zelda commercial from the 80s where the two suburban white kids rap about Link and encourage him to “get some.”

Star Trek The Next Generation: The Space Between #1

Adan: It’s a Star Trek comic book! Wheeee! The continuity of the book seems to be amid Season One because Tasha Yar is still alive and Worf and Geordi are still wearing Command red. The story is pretty good with a neat idea about rewritable history. Unfortunately, the art is not so good. Casey Maloney is using a style in which the characters he’s drawing only sometimes resemble the people he’s supposedly drawing from. And something’s gotta be said about the regular art cover: all five Enterprises are their, as well as Tasha, Data, and Picard. However, they’re all wearing different iterations of the Starfleet uniform, from different periods of TNG history. It makes for a cool time-travelly effect.

Laura: The Enterprise D, circa slim, clean-shaven Riker, encounters a race of completely wired people with surgical implants that instantly network them with the cumulative knowledge of their planet. Which seems like a cool idea—imagine being able to mentally access Wikipedia like a personal memory bank. Of course, other people can always edit Wikipedia, and that’s sort of where this story is going. Casey Maloney has some unusual ideas about perspective, particularly when he’s drawing faces, and I could have done without the contrived OOC moralizing on the last page. All in all, it’s a B- TNG story in comic format, but hey—it’s still TNG, and I wouldn’t change the channel if it came on Spike TV.

Ultimate Power #1 Director’s Cut

Adan: Okay, Marvel. Here’s your first language lesson: words have meanings. You can’t just say something is a Director’s Cut if you don’t know what a Director’s Cut is. Let me explain it to you: a Director’s Cut of a movie is a different cut of the the film in question. For example, the Director’s Cut of Superman II is a different version, some say vastly different, of the same film which was theatrically released 27 years ago. New footage was inserted, old footage taken out, sound effects and dialogue changed, so on and so forth. It’s not just the same movie with production notes. That’s called a DVD release with extras. So, you need to change the name of these things from Director’s Cut to DVD Extras or something before everybody finds out how inadequate your language skills really are.

Laura: I love Greg Land’s art. I really, really do. I’m almost so taken with the pretty pictures that I can forget how incredibly thin the plot is. Almost. Ultimate FF fights the Serpent Squad, a crew of scaly ladies competing to see who can wear the lowest scoop neck before their breasts fall out of their costumes. Reed feels bad that Ben is a giant rock that no one will ever love. That’s kind of the whole issue. I got to the final splash page and turned the page expecting—I don’t know, more content, some sort of explanation, a natural stopping point—only to discover it was over. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I almost wish Land had taken a cue from Lady Death and just done some sort of Ultimate FF picture book. I’d rather see pretty pictures of Sue Storm as a mermaid and Ben Grimm as a Viking warrior than have my visuals distracted by an insubstantial story that only serves to irritate me.

And Others…

Adan: Superman: Emperor Joker TP!!!! Finally, finally, finally, finally, finally! I once had a conversation with Uncle Dan about when this storyline would be traded and he said probably not during his tenure because that story was written before he was there and he didn’t care so much about it. I’m glad he was lying. Everybody needs to read this arc because there is nothing better than a psychotic lunatic getting god-like powers and re-inventing the world in his image. Buy it, read it, love it, and then buy some for your whole family so that they can do the same.

On the other hand, why must you ruin things, DC? The cover of 52 this week ruins any element of surprise one may have still had by revealing exactly who Supernova really is. You couldn’t have let us find out while reading the book, where there would probably have been more of an emotional impact? For shame, DC. For shame. Also, the final issues of the Ultimate Clone Saga in Ultimate Spider-Man and the Cable saga in Ultimate X-men were equally disappointing and stupid. Where is the once mighty Ultimate Universe that could do no wrong? Is this merely the blasted remnants that say “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” with the same irony that Shelley’s Ozymandias did?