GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #296: THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

I have to say that I'm shocked by how successful my gofundme has been. One day, and I'm already over my goal. I have so many thanks to give all who pitched in and helped out. I should be able to cover my meds for a while, which should buy me the time to get a job with medical insurance. I'm so grateful to you all. Thank you so much! When I lost my insurance, I considered creating a gofundme, but fear held me back. Who would contribute? I didn't think it would get far beyond maybe twenty bucks. You all surprised the hell out of me. Again, thank you!


I have to say, though, I don't think it would have been possible without the help of one person.


I've been a fan of Joe Hill's since Heart-Shaped Box came out. I followed his career through books and comic books. I met him once at Andersons in Naperville. I've kept up with NOS4A2 on AMC and Locke & Key on Netflix and his Creepshow episode, etc. I'm so glad that this explosion of attention he is getting is happening. Because not only is he an amazing author, he's also a good person.


All I meant to do was comment on Twitter on how much I enjoyed Locke & Key. It got his attention, and he must have seen my post about running out of Paxil. He said if I put together a gofundme, he'd contribute. That gave me the courage I needed to create the page. Not only did he do that, but he retweeted it to everyone who followed him, and a lot of them responded very positively. A lot of them even contributed and put me over my goal.


See? The internet isn't always the cesspool people say it is. Maybe tonight this shouldn't be called Goodnight, Fuckers. Because a lot of you--maybe even most of you reading this--are definitely not Fuckers. You are good people.


Thank you so much, Joe Hill, for everything.

COOL SHIT 12-19-13

LOCKE & KEY: ALPHA #2: [Remember, Cool Shit usually contains spoilers, so tread lightly.] So this is it. The final issue of my favorite ongoing comic book series, and it’s a big motherfucker with 10 extra pages, plus a bunch of extras in the back. It starts out with Bode’s funeral, which is perfectly juxtaposed with how this series began. Remember, when we first met Mr. Locke’s family, it was at his funeral, and the panels match perfectly. But this isn’t about tragedy. No, this is about tying up loose ends, and it only makes sense that it’s Ty that does it. He goes back to the ruins of their home and does the one thing no one really expected him to do: he saves Lucas Caravaggio from the well. Pretty crazy, no? He does a couple of other things while he’s there, one of which alleviates a lot of sorrow, and after another funeral, Ty closes out the series with one final talk with his dead father. It’s a very beautiful issue, not just due to Joe Hill’s outstanding writing, but also because of Gabriel Rodriguez’s incredible artwork. Hill asked Rodriguez to do some of the craziest art in comics history, and the guy fucking delivered each and every time. He’s easily my favorite artist working in the industry today. I’m going to miss this series.

Check out this awesome quote from Mr. Locke: “Death isn’t the end of your life, you know. Your body is a lock. Death is the key. The key turns . . . and you’re free. To be anywhere, everywhere, two places at once. Nowhere. Part of the background hum of the universe.”

So that’s it. If you have any problem with how this book ended, Joe Hill has something for ya’:

COOL SHIT 9-12-13

KICK-ASS 3 #3:  Aw, man!  The BATMAN:  YEAR ONE plan didn’t work out.  That’s all right, I guess.  Things got pretty fucked up without it.  The Motherfucker is back in action, too, but the real star of this one was Hit-Girl and how she’s been conducting herself in prison.  Drinking whiskey, smoking cigarettes, and castrating drug dealers.  Good times.

THE WALKING DEAD #114:  The stage is set for “All Out War.”  Jesus did a lot of ass kicking this issue, more than you’ve ever seen him do before.  Hell, he managed to upstage Ezekiel’s tiger.  More importantly, Rick is constantly reminded of his fuck up by everyone else.  He’s been too undependable lately, so hopefully this shit gets him back in working order.  And Negan?  Oh, he’s pissed.  The shit hits the fan next month, and I can’t wait!

LOCKE & KEY:  ALPHA #1:  Wow.  Now we finally know Dodge’s plan, and holy shit, it’s even crazier and more destructive than anyone could imagine.  It’s much better than the usual rule-the-world bullshit.  A lot of the plot gets wrapped up in this issue.  People die, things are destroyed, and Tyler shows off a very valuable talent.  It looks like all that’s left is an epilogue.  That final panel is an absolute heart-breaker.  And check it out:  in the back, they show some pictures taken during the making of the ill-fated pilot episode of LOCKE & KEY.  It looks like things really came together on that pilot.  It’s a shame this is probably the closest we’ll ever come to seeing it.  1 ISSUE LEFT!

COOL SHIT 3-15-12

CROSSED: BADLANDS #1: Garth Ennis returns to the book he launched for Avatar. Once again, we have a new band of survivors, a new group of people to get to know before Ennis ruthlessly murders them. This time out, he runs into a problem he created for Lapham and Spurrier on their series: he has to one-up everything that has come before. Ennis is up to the task; in the most horrifying scene, he has a Crossed driving a car and throwing a living baby at someone. The baby splatters all over the place, and since Jacen Burrows has also returned to illustrate, we get to see the gory results. Good times ahead, folks. Good times.

G.I. JOE: INFESTATION #1: Fuck me. This kind of surprised me. Something good is actually coming from IDW’s stupid INFESTATION cross-over. Cobra finds a Mythos relic and they’re trying to figure out how to use it to kill people. The best part: watching Interrogator go among his patients, insane Cobra soldiers who are no longer fit to serve. Good stuff.

ANGEL AND FAITH #7: So Drusilla is sane for the first time in centuries, and she wants to help Angel forget about all the evil things he’s done in his life, to make him a better person. Angel rebels against the idea, as would any intelligent human being. Who wants to take away things that make one human? Faith’s father has also showed up, and he seems to have good intentions, as he’s been sober for six months. Yet . . . it looks like he has other intentions. Things are getting very interesting here.

LOCKE AND KEY: CLOCKWORKS #5: Now we finally know what turned Dodge into the monster we first met at the bottom of the well. Well, not the whole story, but we know that Rendell used the Head Key on him and removed all memories of the Door. Dodge turns into a complete dick, so much so it hurts. Poor Ellie’s heart is absolutely destroyed because of it. To top things off, Joe Hill throws in another surprise: Rendell’s ghostly mother is hanging out in the well house. Weird. 8 ISSUES TO GO.

COOL SHIT 2-2-12

THE BOYS #63: Listen up, motherfuckers. If you’re not reading this book . . . I’ve failed you. I don’t know what else I can say to get you on board. I think I’ve gushed about every issue of this book since I started doing Cool Shit. Well, if you’re still (somehow) on the fence, there are only two issues left after this one. A shit-ton of longtime characters die in this issue. High profile characters. The Homelander’s plan is finally in full swing as superheroes attack Washington. He does such an efficient job because he has tricked both the Boys and Vought into fighting each other while he goes off and kills a bunch of politicians. Butcher is his usual charming self, while Hughie makes a decision which might damn him. Frenchie suffers a little while the Female . . . well, she kicks the shit out of a lot of people, which makes her very happy. This book is so hot, it scorched my hands while reading it. We’re headed for an all-out, fucked-up, gorefest of an ending. Butcher’s going to Washington, you see, and he’s going to get his longtime wish: a final showdown with the Homelander, the superhero who killed the love of his life. Get your head out of your ass and read this book. It is hands down my favorite ongoing series. I haven’t been so excited about a series since, well, PREACHER.

LOCKE AND KEY: CLOCKWORKS #4: Speaking of books that will end soon . . . although don’t worry. Joe Hill’s not nearly as close to the ending as Garth Ennis is with THE BOYS. (This one has nine issues to go.)  As with the previous issue, we get more of the back story of the Locke family, and what exactly Rendell Locke did that irreparably fucked up his group of friends. The pieces are all falling together. We’re almost ready for the final stretch of this story, now that we know how Caravaggio became the creature in the well. It is Rendell’s final magical act as a child, to create a key that will give all of his friends a piece of magic to carry with them for the rest of their lives, even though it’s forbidden by the rules of the house in which he lives. Wait until you read his plan and how it gets fucked up. In case you couldn’t tell, this is my second favorite ongoing series.  (My third is THE WALKING DEAD, which is nowhere near the end, if ever they reach an ending point.)


And now, before I finish up, I’d like to give you another installment of SHIT SHIT. No, I’m not going to talk about that bullshit INFESTATION 2: TRANSFORMERS book, although I should. They’re actually advertising it as steampunk. The fucking nerve . . . . And I’m not going to talk about the new WINTER SOLDIER book. Doesn’t Brubaker write enough CAPTAIN AMERICA books? He needs another one? No, what I want to discuss is . . .

G.I. JOE: A REAL AMERICAN HERO: IDW really needs to bring a stop to this book. I thought it was a cool idea at first, seeing as how my second favorite series when I was a kid was G.I. JOE. Since the title was so popular, why not bring the original series back and pick up where they left off? Well, I now know why not. This is a nostalgia book, nothing more. The stuff that happens in it might have been cool to little-kid me, but it all seems kind of stupid to my adult brain. Also, we have three perfectly good G.I. JOE titles going right now, full of awesome stuff that I occasionally talk about here in Cool Shit. I’ll admit, it’s sometimes fun to see the old Cobra Commander in action, but that alone does not make this a good book. Sorry, Mr. Hama. I genuinely like your stuff, but just not this. Please stop.

COOL SHIT 7-21-11

G.I. JOE: COBRA CIVIL WAR: SNAKE EYES #3: Snake-Eyes captured by Khallikhan?! Alpine seriously wounded? Helix versus impossible odds? And Iceberg trying to get Alpine down the mountain before a bunch of snow vipers kill them? Khallikhan’s interrogation of Snake-Eyes alone is worth the price of admission. And what with Slice and Dice hanging around in the shadows, anything can happen. Hell is coming down on these characters. Get in while the getting’s good!

THE TRANSFORMERS #22: Dude! Dude! DUDE! How many times have we seen Optimus Prime face off against Megatron? No matter how bad the repercussions, we all know how it’s going to work out. Nobody is going to permanently die. But this time, it’s different. It’s far more interesting than it’s ever been before because IT’S NOT A BATTLE TO THE DEATH. It’s a fucking conversation, perhaps one of the most important to ever happen in the Transformers universe. We finally get down to the differences (and some of the similarities) between the two mortal enemies. In fact, at some points they almost seem like friends reminiscing about the damage they’ve done to each other. If you were ever a fan of the Transformers, you need to read this issue. We even get to look into the past, to see a young Megatron more interested in peaceful rebellion, more interested in rhetoric, more interested in reasonable solutions to intolerable problems. I can’t tell you how much of a hard-on I got from this book.

LOCKE AND KEY: CLOCKWORKS #1: Just as things are coming to a head, writer Joe Hill brings things back to the past, back to revolutionary America, to the root of the Locke story. Finally we get a glimpse of how things started, how things got so crazy, at Keyhouse. And finally, the Lovecraft connection is complete, with references to Shub-Niggurath, the Goat of a Thousand Young. Things are quickly coming to an end in the world of this series. Now’s the perfect time to get on board (especially since the TV show is coming out pretty soon).

COOL SHIT 1-20-11

G.I. JOE/COBRA #12: How is it possible that this book can get any better? The argument between Tomax and Xamot finally comes to a head, and Xamot’s madness turns out to be surprisingly clever. Meanwhile, Chuckles is still up to his neck in shit as Cobra trains him to become the perfect double agent. I think the next issue is going to be the last, because a major fuckin’ character dies in this one. Next month, Chuckles and Xamot are supposed to fight to the death. I’m excited, folks. This new era of G.I. JOE books gives me a raging hard-on. Get with the program and start reading this one!

LOCKE AND KEY: KEYS TO THE KINGDOM #4: You’re still not reading this book? What the fuck? Writer Joe Hill says that he’s at the halfway mark in this story, so you don’t have a lot of time left. And this is a really good jumping on point. We get a shitload of answers in this issue. What is “Zack Wells” really up to? Got an answer. How can he/she be stopped? Got an answer. Why have a character like Rufus hanging around in the distant background? Got an answer, and it’s a doozy. If G.I. JOE/COBRA gives me a raging hard-on, this book gives me wet dreams. There are only 15 issues remaining. Again, GET WITH THE PROGRAM!

THE BOYS #50: Like I’m not going to talk about the fiftieth issue of THE BOYS. Please. It seems like it was only yesterday that this book was canceled by Wildstorm. I remember being pissed off at the time, but now that Wildstorm has been shut down, I’m grateful. In this issue, we find out that Butcher was inadvertently responsible for Mallory’s granddaughters being murdered by the supes, and as you can guess, it’s turned into a matter of contention between the two. We also find out how the Boys and the supes come to an uneasy stand-still, and also how the Boys lost their funding in the first place. More importantly, we finally find out why Maeve drinks so much, and considering the answer, no one could ever blame her. Oh, and we finally find out what happened to Lamplighter. All I can say is, I approve. Considering the animosity between Butcher and Mallory, I’m starting to wonder if the former murdered the latter for his own political reasons. The rest of the Boys are unaware, I’m sure, but I think that’s the direction Ennis is going in. Do I even have to ask you to get with the program? This book gives me wet dreams with multiple orgasms.


I wish the publishers of these books would read Cool Shit. I would give anything to have my rave review, “This book gives me wet dreams with multiple orgasms,” on the cover of the next issue . . . .