COOL SHIT 1-9-14

SEX CRIMINALS #4: Of course I’m going to love a series called SEX CRIMINALS. It helps that it’s illustrated by the maniac behind PRISON FUNNIES, Chip Zdarsky. In case you don’t know, this book is about two people who discover that they can freeze time whenever they have an orgasm, so they decide to fuck each other and take advantage of the frozen world by robbing banks. Unfortunately for them, there is a police force that keeps an eye out for such things, and our sex criminals are now on guard against them. We learn a bit about one of the “cops” in this issue, that she’s a soccer mom whose job comes second to her precious kids. We also find out what happens when one smokes weed in frozen time. But best of all is Suzie’s roommate’s conclusion, that Suzie’s new boyfriend has gotten her hooked on public sex and now they’re planning bank heists together. In what world would one jump so readily to that conclusion? By the way, SC has the absolute best letters column ever. Even better than PREACHER’s. I love the sex tips at the top of each page. For example: “Nothing wrong with stopping at second base for the first few weeks. But if you were a pro baseball player I’d fucking fire you.” Or this: “Sex is a wonderful and natural way to discover if your partner is a lousy lay or not.” And be sure to check out Zdarsky’s pizza vagina.

FATALE #19: We’ve reached the end of another story arc, and it’s been a lot of fun to watch Brubaker return to his roots with a story like this. Of course it ends tragically. Maybe more tragic than on the surface, actually, considering the epilogue. Josephine has finally come back to herself. She knows who she is again, but there’s no way she can save the day, not for a group of people who were doomed from the very moment we met them. And then there’s Mr. Somerset, and I can’t wait to learn more about him. Brubaker says that the next story is going to be much different from anything else he’s done here. I have no choice but to believe him. This book defies expectations. It started with Lovecraftian noir, and it’s come so far, especially in the one-story issues. I can’t wait to see what’s next. (By the way, take a look at Sean Phillips’s illustration of Mr. Somerset above. I have never seen a creepier depiction of sheer joy in my life.)

THE WALKING DEAD #119: Truthfully, I haven’t been a big fan of ALL OUT WAR. It’s been a lot of build-up for very little payoff so far. Every time it looks like something big will happen, next to nothing does. This issue is probably going to lead to more of the same, but there are a few interesting things in here. For example, Michonne calls Ezekiel a pussy, and she’s right. Take his stupid fucking tiger away from him, and he’s a sniveling mess. Negan has arrived at the Community again, this time armed with explosives. And hey! We now know what happened to Holly. I swear to fuck, if this confrontation leads to more beating around the bush, I’m going to be sorely disappointed. (Also, pay attention to the letters column. Before, Kirkman has said this series could go on forever. Sure enough, it probably could. This is the first time that he’s admitted to working toward an actual ending. Don’t worry, though. We have plenty of time. He thinks he can tackle this in 300-500 issues.)

BROTHER LONO #7: This is it. The penultimate issue of this miniseries. And the moment we’ve all been waiting for is finally upon us. For six issues, Lono struggled with the beast inside of himself, doing his best to atone for his life of crime and sin. Last issue saw him captured, and now we witness his torture. Except it doesn’t end so well for his torturer as the real Lono rises from his self-imposed grave, ready to deal death to all who have it coming. ONE ISSUE TO GO!

COOL SHIT 7-18-13

BROTHER LONO #2:  I can’t tell you how awesome it is to be back in Lono’s world.  After the events at the end of 100 BULLETS, he is most definitely a changed man.  In this issue, we learn how he wound up at the mission, but more importantly, we learn how he handles himself these days in the face of violence.  For a guy who used to be an absolute lunatic, he has learned to rein himself in.  He gets a gun shoved in his face in one scene, and all he can say, very quietly and calmly, is “sorry.”  But it is clearly not easy for him.  Eduardo Risso is very good at showing the wavering, flowing violence just crawling beneath Lono’s skin.  There is no way Brian Azzarello is going to let him make it to the end of this mini-series without cracking some skulls.  I can’t wait to see where this is going!

ARSENIC LULLABY:  THE BIG STALL:  Not too long ago, writer and artist Douglas Paszkiewicz was ready to just give up on his long-running indie book, THE ARSENIC LULLABY.  And then, someone told him about Kickstarter, so he decided to give it a shot as a last ditch effort to keep the book alive.  I jumped on this motherfucker as soon as I heard about it, and so did a lot of other people.  Now, THE BIG STALL is finally out, and it’s awesome as all hell.  A lot of it is a collection of strips he did for MAD, but they decided they were too harsh for their readership.  And yeah, they were probably right.  Of course, Paszkiewicz is a harsh bastard, as we all know, and it’s perfect for HIS readership.  There are also a few bigger stories in here, like “Baron Von Donut Ruins Xmas” and my personal favorite, “Sympathy for Cthulhu,” in which Cthulhu goes to a newspaper office and tries to figure out a way he could get people to panic in his name.  He goes to great fuckin’ depths to achieve this, some Machiavellian shit, but the funniest part is how mundane his real plan is.  One of my favorite lines is when Cthulhu says, “All the decent ‘joiner’ types get into the KKK or Satan worshipping.  All I get are disgruntled English lit students.”  You’ll also find a lot of WIZARD OF OZ humor, a few Nazi laughs, a few jokes at the expense of tsunami-flattened cities, and a Rabbi who circumcises babies by throwing knives at them.  Only those with a nasty sense of humor need apply.  (And hey!  Look at that!  There’s my name on the Special Thanks page!)

C2E2 2013: THE VERTIGO PANEL

This was one of the stranger panels I went to, and all the credit/blame goes to Brian Azzarello.  Shawn McManus, Andrew Pepoy, and Will Dennis were also present for this flabbergasting clusterfuck.  Azzarello had something scathing to say about everybody and everything.  He was so surly, I wondered if maybe he’d had a few too many before taking to the stage.

No, he hadn’t been drinking, but he is a smart man.  He’s aware that Vertigo is on the very brink of shutting down.  Let’s face it, they got Constantine out of there because they didn’t want to lose him.  The only strong title they have are the FABLES related ones (I don’t count AMERICAN VAMPIRE because it’s on hiatus).  Azzarello earned a name for himself doing things like JONNY DOUBLE and 100 BULLETS, in addition to a bunch of short work for FLINCH and STRANGE ADVENTURES.  So . . . he doesn’t want Vertigo to go away.

Everyone on this panel was being wishy-washy about their own work, but Azzarello tried pumping them up.  In fact, it seemed like he was channeling Bull Murray from SCROOGED.  He wanted you to be deathly afraid of missing any of these issues.

Anyway, on to the announcements.  BROTHER LONO is not necessarily a sequel to 100 BULLETS, but it is a spin-off.  Someone, I forget who, said that this was their Laverne and Shirley.  Apparently, Azzarello and artist Eduardo Risso hashed this mini-series out in a taxi in Spain.  It looks like Lono is a religious man now, trying to atone for his life of crime.  Of course, it can’t work out very well for him.  It is an Azzarello book, after all.

Dennis mentioned that Azzarello and he were supposed to go over the final corrections the previous night in the bar, but they’d gotten drunk instead.  As a result, they started going over the corrections then and there.  Like, right in front of us.  At the fucking panel.

While they did that, the announcements continued.  They showed us the cover to FAIREST #17, but they said the cover of #15 was top secret.  They mentioned that they were starting an arc about a new character soon, but that’s all they had to say.  [NOTE:  We now know that the reason they couldn’t show the cover to 15 was because they were bringing Prince Charming back.]

FABLES #131 was next, but they talked more about Pepoy than the book.  Apparently, Pepoy had known writer Bill Willingham since the respective ages of 14 and early 20’s.  Pepoy brought his own table and set up next to Willingham at a previous Chicago con, and this led to his first Vertigo work.  Willingham brought him up to the big leagues.  Also, Pepoy has a weird fixation with the band, Men Without Hats.  He took a lot of shit for it.

THE WAKE is a book from Scott Snyder and Sean Murphy that will be released sometime in May.  It’s a horror book, but they didn’t say much else. [NOTE:  I have since read the first issue, and I still can’t tell you what it’s about.  I think we’ll finally get let in on the plot in issue 2.]

Around this point, someone mentioned a book that was on the New York Times bestseller list, and Azzarello lost his shit yet again.  “Listen, everyone is on the fucking New York Times bestseller list.  It’s overrated.  Do you people actually care about the New York Times bestseller list?”  He has a point.  Just because something is a bestseller doesn’t mean it’s good.

Anyway, speaking of Scott Snyder, AMERICAN VAMPIRE is a long way off from resuming.  In the meantime, he has a mini-series about Travis, the vampire hunter with the wooden fangs, called THE LONG ROAD TO HELL.  Fuck yeah!  He’s one of my favorite characters, aside from Skinner Sweet, of course.

Jeff Lemire has TRILLIUM coming soon.  It’s touted as the Last Love Story Ever Told.  It takes place in two different eras with two people, one from each, who fall in love with each other.  They called it THE NOTEBOOK with ray guns.  That sounds pretty cool.  Azzarello, tired of the wishy-washy marketing job done by the others, broke in yet again with, “Has Lemire written anything that sucks?  No?  Then it’s going to be a great book!”

The last announcement was COLLIDER, a new book from Simon Oliver, who did THE EXTERMINATORS (which I might feature on Forgotten Comic Books someday, even though it wasn’t that long ago).

They opened up for questions, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stick around or not, because I wanted to make the John Scalzi signing.  Eh, fuck it.  What the hell?  I got in line to ask a question.

You all probably have an idea of what I asked.  It’s the question I always ask when I have Vertigo people around.  Or when I have Garth Ennis around.  I’d ask if Steve Dillon were around, but I’ve never met the guy.  But while I was waiting in line, someone in front of me asked what work the panelists were really enjoying these days.  Pepoy said that he liked a lot of stuff coming out of Artists Alley, and he mentioned Kevin Bandt in particular.  Holy shit!  I know Kevin Bandt!  When I got home, I couldn’t rush to Facebook fast enough to tell him about Pepoy’s shout-out.

Then, it was my turn.  Yes, I asked about the final, unpublished PREACHER story, the one about the Sex Investigators.  Vertigo refused to do it because of the content.  I demanded answers.  Dennis said that it probably wasn’t going to happen, but then Azzarello blasted my balls off.  “NO!  The book’s not going to happen!  Why would you ask that stupid question?”

Dennis said that he was trying to let me down easy.  I slinked off, notifying everyone that I was going to weep myself to sleep that night.  I guess I will never get a better response to that question, so I’m going to have to retire it.  When Azzarello, who looks—coincidentally, I’m sure—a lot like the God of War in WONDER WOMAN, says something like that, I’m pretty sure it’s the truth.

So there you have it.  The biggest scoop I will ever get at one of these panels.  The last PREACHER story is never going to happen.  What a grim and sad ending to a strange and savage panel.