COOL SHIT 9-29-11

AMERICAN VAMPIRE #19: So . . . Skinner Sweet and Jim Book, mortal enemies, were childhood friends? And Book’s family adopted Skinner when his parents died, making them brothers? Very interesting. We finally get a look at Sweet before he was turned into a vampire. It turns out that even as a child, he was an evil little bastard. I desperately hope that what happened at the end of #18 wasn’t the end of him. Without him, I don’t know if I want to go on reading this book.

THE LAST ZOMBIE: INFERNO #3: So far, this book has just been good enough. For those who don’t know, the zombie apocalypse is over, and we won. It’s just that the world has been thrown into chaos, and a group of soldiers is making their way across the wasteland that remains. Dr. Ian Scott wants nothing more than to see his wife again, but somehow he’s become infected and is turning into a zombie. He keeps this a secret from the others because he wants to make it to his woman before he dies. The real star, however, and the character who made me want to add this book to Cool Shit this week, is Planters, one of the soldiers, who is haunted by what happened to his family during the zombie apocalypse. We finally get his story, and holy shit, is it a nasty one. If you only know writer Brian Keene from his novels, you should try out this book.

KICK-ASS 2 #4: Yes, ladies and gentlemen, what you see above is Red Mist gunning down several children, and that’s not even the worst thing he does in this issue. All right, he’s calling himself Motherfucker these days, but it’s still everyone’s favorite twat, Red Mist. Even his fellow supervillains think this is fucked up. His response: “Oh, come on. So iCarly loses a few viewers? Give me a fucking break.” He then proceeds to rape Kick-Ass’ love interest. That’s right, he rapes her. Think about the horrifying implications of this. When the Joker crippled Barbara Gordon, did he rape her? No, he merely shot her in the spine. When was the last time you heard of the Green Goblin forcing himself on Gwen Stacy? Right. Writer Mark Millar has upped the ante with this issue. It’s almost like he’s taken Alan Moore’s place. Remember when Moore published the second LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN? And he had Mr. Hyde rape the Invisible Man to death? It was almost as if Moore had seen the movie made of the first and was daring Hollywood to put that scene to film. That’s the same kind of feeling I’m getting from Millar on this one. I’d tell you to go out and buy this book, but considering its enormous popularity, you probably already have.