GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #11: CROSSED

No, this is not a repeat. Last night's GF was called "Cross," not "Crossed." This time, I'm talking about the Avatar Press series created by Garth Ennis. It's an amazing, depraved book, and I'm glad it keeps getting more and more fucked up. Except . . .


I think I'm getting tired of it. I love the concept, and there are a few writers that I really enjoy on the series. However, I think that more and more, this series is about outdoing whoever wrote the previous arc instead of actually telling a great story. I appreciate people trying to up the ante on fucked up things, but there has to be something more to that going on.


Garth Ennis is obviously my favorite CROSSED writer. David Lapham and Si Spurrier are tied for a close second. The others? Eh, it's hard to separate them. Sometimes they tell great stories, and others, they're just trying to play the gross-out game. I love gross-out games, but like I said, there has to be something more to it. You can't just do it for its own sake.


The new guy is doing it for its own sake. He's showing Crossed children eating their younger siblings and begging regular human beings to fuck them. I'm not against depictions of that, although I would never, personally, do that. I think it's too easy to fuck with a reader by resorting to violence with kids, so I avoid it unless I have a very good reason. I am, however, against it for its own sake.


Don't get me wrong. I'm not on a moral crusade. I'm not telling you to boycott the book. That's silly. I just think that CROSSED shouldn't be doing this kind of thing. I'd much rather prefer stories where actual characters are suffering through real plots, that's all. You can be as fucked up as you want, just so long as there's something actually going on. If I wanted fucked up shit happening just 'cause, and women characters who exist only to show their tits, I'll read something else. Porn, in the case of the latter. Porn is really good at that. The former? I don't tend to think about it.

COOL SHIT 4-17-14

AMERICAN VAMPIRE: SECOND CYCLE #2: Wow. Back for two issues, and already things have just gone off the fucking rails. First of all, it’s great to see Cal again. But under the circumstances? I’m sure all things considered, he’d rather be in Philadelphia. And now that we’ve met the Gray Trader, things are probably going to get even more fucked up, especially if he’s really what Cal says he is. I’m so glad this book is finally back.

THE TRANSFORMERS: WINDBLADE #1: Ever since the animated movie, people have been baffled by Arcee’s existence. How could there only be one female Transformer? What are they, fucking Smurfs? Well, IDW has decided to address the issue by bringing in more women characters. As previously seen, they were taking care of the dying Metroplex up until now. Now, they’re on Cybertron and they’re trying to help Starscream get things up and running. Windblade is the only point of communication they have with Metroplex, since she’s the only one who can speak his language. It’s interesting to see this concept in action, but what really made me crack up was when Rattrap voiced it in a very awkward moment: “So . . . uh. What’s the—uh—whole you both being called ‘she’ thing about?” I could be mistaken, but I think Mairghread Scott is the first woman writer to ever tackle this title. Too bad they’re only giving her a mini-series.

ROVER RED CHARLIE #5: Only Garth Ennis could take a story about animals and make it as obscene as possible. I love the way these dogs think. “I’m a dog!” is how their frantic barks are translated. Oceans are big splashes. Humans are feeders. Those who haven’t had their balls cut greet each other by fucking. Take this POV and put it into a zombie apocalypse, and you have this book. In a previous issue, artist Michael DiPascale portrayed a human licking shit out of a dog’s asshole. Somehow, in this issue, Ennis and DiPascale outdo that scene with the short bus. I’ll let you read about that all on your own, though. It’s that good. I hate stories about animals, but I’m going to miss this one when it concludes next month.

STRAY BULLETS: KILLERS #2: It’s good to see Eli all grown up, and it would seem that he lost his foot in that car accident. He lost his father in it, too. But it looks like he’s gained a few interesting stories, and he might be getting laid pretty soon. But this isn’t his story. This is about a troubled young woman named Virginia, and her relationship with her aunt and uncle. David Lapham does two kinds of stories really good: tits and violence stories and depressing stories. This one is the latter, and the ending is just a heartbreaker.

NEW COMIC BOOK REVIEW: STRAY BULLETS: KILLERS #1

Please be sure to check out my new comic book review at the Napalm Reviews. I take a look at the new STRAY BULLETS book, KILLERS. Read it here. Thanks!

COOL SHIT 8-22-13

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD:  AFTERMATH #10:  Noooooooo!  Writer David Hine lived up to his threat from last issue.  They took my favorite character and injected him with the zombie serum.  Many of you may remember me saying they should have given Vic his own spin-off, but I guess that’s not happening now . . . .  However, he’s not out of the picture yet.  It seems that this new version of the serum has let him retain some of his intelligence.  I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I’ll definitely wait it out and see where Hine is going with this.

THE LAST ZOMBIE:  THE END #3:  The shit has hit the fan.  Dr. Ian Scott’s secret is out.  Everyone knows he’s slowly becoming one of the undead.  Now Planters and company have to figure out what they’re going to do with him.  In the meantime, Frankie turns out to be just like her other incarnations.  For those who don’t know, she’s appeared several times in writer Brian Keene’s novels, usually alternate universe versions of her.  Very few of them turn out to have good luck.  They’ve also made a odd choice with the new artist, Ben Dunn.  In fact, looking through this issue kind of reminds me in moments of my webcomic with Robert Tannahill, THE COCAINE! BROS.  When the guys finally make their escape from Chicago, two of them finally get to deal with Harrow.  As they descend upon him, I get a definite Tucker/Hunter feeling from them.

G.I. JOE:  THE COBRA FILES #5:  Finally, we get a look into Clockspring’s past.  He’s easily one of the creepiest members of the Joe team, and not the cool kind of creepy, like Freddy Krueger.  No, this is creepy like the guy who follows you home at midnight.  Still, it’s great to see him finally fleshed out.  We now see what makes him tick.  When I was at C2E2, writer Mike Costa promised a lot of emotional damage coming in the near future.  I think this might be the calm before the storm.  Writers don’t always deliver on such promises, but Costa usually does.  It makes my ballsack shrivel just thinking about it.  I think things are about to get fucked the fuck up.

CROSSED:  BADLANDS #35:  If there was any doubt that Amanda has finally lost it completely, it should be gone by now.  Lorre really got into her head pretty badly, and now she’s murdering regular people, pretending that the Crossed got to them.  So, you know, she had to mutilate the bodies and cut their dicks off, and all that stuff.  How much farther can writer David Lapham push her?  I guess we’ll find out next issue, when this story arc concludes.  (Oh yeah, and Candy has gotten pretty weird, as I’m sure you can tell from the sample above.  That’s the prelude to the strangest face-fuck in comics history.)

KICK-ASS 3 #2:  This is a low-key story for Kick-Ass himself.  No, the star of this one is Rocco Genovese, the most recent member of this scumbag mobster family to enter into play.  He is infinitely scarier than any of his brethren.  I can’t wait to see more of this guy in action.  This is also quite the issue for the Motherfucker’s mother, who toys with the idea of taking her son out of the world to atone for bringing him into it.  Things get mighty strange by the last page.  (OK, Kick-Ass does one thing that’s really cool in this issue.  Check out his BATMAN YEAR ONE plan to see what I mean.)

COOL SHIT (and SHIT SHIT) 7-25-13

JUDGE DREDD #9:  The world of Dredd is pretty crazy sometimes, but this is the craziest to come from the new IDW series.  Dredd wanders out into the Cursed Earth, looking for a hovercraft that “could save Mega-City One.”  Instead, he finds a family of mutie hillbillies running an amusement park with some of the most ghastly rides ever.  My favorite is the Kamikaze Matterhorn.  One of these guys has the ability to touch someone and make them apathetic, which is what he does to Dredd, and now Dredd has to face off against all these freaks and even worse, the Mirrored Madhouse.  (And no, it’s not what you think it is.  It’s far more insidious.)

FERALS #16:  This time out, we take a break from Dale Chesnutt to explore the life of Major General Richard W. Arthur.  It’s a fascinating look at someone who was born Feral, but he never knew it.  Even now, he seems to be in denial.  Even after he finds himself in a life and death battle with another Feral.  And to top it all off, he’s kind of an important guy in the government . . . .

CROSSED:  BADLANDS #33:  It’s good to see David Lapham back on the series.  I wasn’t too impressed with Christos Gage’s story.  Now, we return to Amanda, Lorre’s old victim/survivor.  She’s still living in her fantasy world with her two companions, but now that’s about to be fucked.  It would seem that a group of religious Crossed have moved in on her territory . . . .  I miss Raulo Caceres on this book, though.  Miguel Ruiz isn’t bad, but Caceres is a fucking genius.

RED TEAM #4:  Whoops.  It seems that for all the planning that the Red Team goes through, they dropped the ball on this one.  Thinking to take out a Bernie Madoff type (except this guy was found not guilty), they off him without thinking that maybe the reason the guy got off in court was because he’d made a deal with the prosecution to turn weasel on his friends.  Now all of those guys are going to walk free.  Like I said, whoops.  This leads to a few changes in policy, but it’s not enough to keep certain members of the team for losing it in a questionable bar bathroom with a date rapist . . . .

And now for some SHIT SHIT!  That’s right, 3 books really disgusted me this week.  Let’s start with . . . .

JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #22:  Ah yes.  Behold that cover.  Then take a look around inside to see that our boy John Constantine is hanging out with the big superheroes this issue.  Sure, he had a run in with Flash lately, but now he’s rubbing elbows with the likes of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.  And yes, he’s a bit snarky, but for the most part, he doesn’t give them any crap.  Since when does Constantine not give the capes a hard time?!  Oh right.  I’m sorry, I keep thinking this is MY Constantine, not the pisswarm version in the New 52.  This leads us directly to . . . .

CONSTANTINE #5:  JLD continues right into this issue with Constantine hanging out with Shazam.  Why would he do that?  Well, remember when I said, back when DC brought John Constantine back to the DCU, that they were going to turn him into a superhero?  I was speaking metaphorically.  I guess I was wrong.  In this issue, they turn him—quite literally—into a superhero.  I can’t believe it, either, but look at that picture above.  Do you think I made that up?  I can’t tell you how much this disgusts me.  And then there’s this happy horseshit:

ALL STAR WESTERN #22:  Yep, this asshole is Dr. Arkham’s great-great-grandson.  As much as I despised the idea of bringing Hex to his future—our present—at the very least, it got him away from having a sidekick.  That was worth a lot to me.  And now, even that is undone.  Yeah, this new Dr. Arkham is Hex’s new sidekick.  Oh, and by the way, it looks like they’ve given up on finding a backup story for each issue, but instead of taking pages out and letting us keep an extra dollar, they thought this story was so good that we needed more of it.  Fuck.  (One more thing:  it’s hinted that Hex will be hanging out with Batman in the next issue.  After what’s been going on with Constantine, that shouldn’t surprise me one bit.)

COOL SHIT 1-17-13

G.I. JOE #21:  In today’s issue of G.I. JOE, the role of Hawk will be played by Bruce Willis.  Seriously, this one could have been an ‘Eighties action movie.  Hawk has retired and is living out in the woods when he is suddenly beset by the forces of Cobra, intent on kidnapping him and extracting intelligence from him.  They don’t count on him remembering his training, and they certainly didn’t expect him to be living with Timber, Snake-Eyes’s wolf.  One man against a team of terrorists?  Yeah, that’s some John McClane shit right there.  Oh yeah, and apparently Cobra has iPads with the Cobra insignia on it instead of the usual Apple.  That definitely makes sense.  The only problem is, the cover shows Flint, not Hawk.  Or maybe it’s the movie version of Hawk as portrayed by Dennis Quaid, but that makes no sense, as the worlds aren’t connected.  Am I nitpicking here?  Yeah.  Fuck it.  On to the next one . . . .

STITCHED #11:  Let’s face it, when Garth Ennis stopped writing this book and Mike Wolfer took over, things haven’t been going so well.  Not that Wolfer is a bad writer (although he is a much better artist than he is a writer), but he just didn’t have the same quality as Ennis did.  However, in this issue, we finally find out what caused the Stitched to exist, and it’s a pretty interesting tale.  Hint:  ancient, black devil cum is responsible in some way.  That’s definitely something Ennis would have done.  Hats off, Mr. Wolfer.

CROSSED:  BADLANDS #21:  Speaking of books Ennis used to write . . . .  Unlike Wolfer, David Lapham is an intense motherfucker and constantly tries to one-up Ennis.  Sometimes he succeeds.  This is one of those instances.  Remember Amanda from the “Psychopath” storyline?  The one with Lorre?  Well, she’s back, and it seems that her encounter with Lorre messed her the fuck up.  She’s batshit crazy now, seeing Lorre in every stranger she meets.  And yes, she’s willing to kill all of the suspected Lorres in the world.  Now she might have gone completely off the deep end, though, especially now that Danger Montana is in her life.  He looks suspiciously of a guy who is very familiar with lost arks, temples of doom, last crusades, and crystal skulls.  In fact, he claims that those movies are based on his life.  Even stranger than that is the company he keeps.  In my opinion, there’s no way that this is actually happening.  Amanda is probably already dead, and this is a goofy afterlife or something.  Then again, Lapham is a rabid beast.  He could do anything, so I’m definitely along on this ride.

AND NOW FOR A SPECIAL EDITION OF . . .

SHIT SHIT

Remember a while ago when I brought you news of IDW’s newest bullshit crossover?  And you all called me crazy, that it had to be a hoax, that no one would ever go ahead with such an awful idea?  Behold!  IDW has revealed the proof!  This month will be consumed by their MARS ATTACKS crossover!  Now, MARS ATTACKS is pretty cool, but the other series they’re going to cross it over with?  Uh . . . it’s so bad, it’s sickening.

Shit, I know I’m kind of late with this one.  It just slipped under my radar.  Apparently, three of these books are already out.  First up:  Popeye.  Yes, Popeye.  The guy with the giant forearms and the spinach habit.  Second up?  KISS.  Yeah, no kidding.  The aliens actually go up against fucking KISS.  This week, it was Ghostbusters, but that was just to be expected.  The one that’s going to hurt the most for me is next week’s, which involves the Transformers.  The final one is supposed to be something called Zombies vs. Robots, so I don’t really give much of a fuck.  As if this wasn’t bad enough, they have incentive covers for comic shops.  Though they’re not really actual storylines, the fact that someone thought this shit up disgusts me.  One of them features Opus, from Bloom County.  Or Outland, if you’re too young to remember that.  Or how about a Judge Dredd crossover?  Maybe you’d like to try out Chew and Madman, or how about Spike, from the Buffy universe?  Or . . . fuck it.  I can’t go on.

I told you so.  That’s all I’m trying to say.

COOL SHIT 3-29-12

AMERICAN VAMPIRE #25: This issue marks the end of my absolute favorite AV story arc thus far. We find out why, exactly, Travis is hunting down Skinner Sweet, as he and Sweet battle for what seems like a final time. Travis really, really thinks of everything. The only thing that can hurt Sweet is gold, and Travis had taken the time to mix gold powder into his coffee that morning. You know, on the off chance that Sweet would try to drink his blood. There is really no lengths to which Travis won’t go to get this guy. We still don’t know how Sweet survived WWII, but we do know something interesting and new about him. Believe it or not, it’s enough to turn Travis away from him. I hope the next story arc doesn’t let me down. Still, I don’t know how Snyder will be able to top this.

COBRA COMMAND: COBRA #11: The next mini-series reaches its end, and it’s kind of cool. Nothing too big happens . . . except the one scene that earns this book a place in Cool Shit. The Baroness is confronted by Ronin, a super-secret Joe. The latter seems to have the upper hand on the former, but it looks like the Baroness bites a cyanide pill in order to kill herself to evade being interrogated. Unfortunately for Ronin, she is actually swallowing the cure for the gas the Baroness has just unleashed. Ronin is about to die . . . except she is clever. Since the Baroness had the only capsule, Ronin forces her mouth on the Baroness’s, swallowing as much of the cure as she can. How awesome is that? This is not your father’s GI Joe.

THE LAST ZOMBIE: NEVERLAND #2: Once again, we get an all right issue except for one thing: our heroes are cutting their way through a cornfield when they discover they’re surrounded by guns . . . being held by children. That’s right, a bunch of kids have been living together in the middle of nowhere, defending themselves with automatic rifles, by their own admission killing people to survive. Now, they’re aiming guns at Ian Scott and his fellow military friends. How awesome is that? In addition, my copy has a double cover. There was probably a mix up, which resulted in me getting two identical covers on my book. That’ll be worth a lot of money in the future, right? Like an error baseball card, right? Right?!

CROSSED: BADLANDS #2: Garth Ennis gets far uglier than David Lapham could ever imagine. Lapham relied on horrible physical images to get his CROSSED material across. Sure, there was a lot of psychological stuff to it, but Ennis brings it to a whole new level. The narrator is your basic Everyman, but in his very quiet kind of way, he proves himself to be a complete bastard. We learn that he’s got a history of running away from big groups, but now we know that he’s not afraid to abandon a pregnant woman in order to preserve his own life. He’s ballsy enough to suggest to the group that everyone leave her alone to give birth, in order to save themselves from an incoming group of Crossed. If she lives, she can rejoin them later. The rest of the group certainly have their reservations about this plan (as would any good person), but one must wonder: if it came down to a survival situation just like this, how many readers would do the right thing? How many more would join the protagonist in fleeing? It’s some really nasty material (and I’m still digging the shit out of the character who claims to be Prince Harry; he’s such a bastard that one character is convinced he’s not lying because anyone in the royal family must be a fuck). Sad to say, there’s only one more Ennis issue of this book. Good news: Jamie Delano is picking up after this.

Also, it's worth noting that the narrator mentions the last group he was a part of, which was ruled by a triumverate of alpha males who constantly argued.  One of them makes a racist comment to another, and the narrator stops and thinks, really?  We're still doing this?  And I couldn't help but think, of course.  The rules of society have been canceled.  People are not afraid to let their real selves out.  Let's face it, most people don't use the dreaded n-word because society tells them it's not the proper thing to do.  However, just because society says no doesn't mean that the racist urge disappears.  That's why there are so many closet racists in the suburbs, for example.  If the rules no longer apply, then they have no reason to keep their ugliness inside.  So yes, Ennis, they are doing this, even in the middle of the Crossed apocalypse.  Especially then.

COOL SHIT 2-9-12

FERALS #2: David Lapham runs rampant once again with his new werewolf book for Avatar. As with last issue, there isn’t really anything remarkable about it, except for a stunning amount of gore. To be expected from a guy whose credits include CROSSED and CALIGULA. The only new development is that our protagonist, Walnutt, is apparently the suspect of the gruesome mutilations, as his semen was found in two of the victims (not surprising, since he’d fucked them both in the recent past), and due to the werewolf attack at the conclusion of last issue, he, too, is one of the Garou. Since he’s sworn to destroy the original monster, it’s pretty obvious where this is going. Considering Lapham’s ruthlessness, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

DICKS #1: YES! YES! YES! DICKS is back! Well, kind of. Avatar is reprinting all of the previous issues before they get to new DICKS about a year or so down the line. In fact, this is the second time they’ve reprinted this issue, except this time it’s in COLOR. Somehow, this makes it even more obscene than usual. And the best part: they reprinted the extras from BIGGER DICKS #1! (In case you don’t know, DICKS was originally put out by Caliber. Avatar bought the rights and reprinted all four issues with extra stuff, hence the title, BIGGER DICKS.) Trio the Fucking Whore is back, as well as Mick O’Lobb and Buddy Wizer, to say nothing of the Wanker’s History of Wanking. Seriously, if you’ve never heard of DICKS, this is your chance to get in on the ground floor. (Well, technically it’s not the ground-ground floor. That would be TROUBLED SOULS and FOR A FEW TROUBLES MORE, the books that got Garth Ennis and John McCrea started. Dougie and Ivor were minor characters in the former, and the latter was pretty much a cleaner version of the first DICKS storyline. But you’ll never find those books, and they’ll probably never be reprinted. Besides, you don’t need to have read them to enjoy this.) Do not hesitate. Get down to your local comic book store and get a copy. Get the offensive cover before they’re all gone. You’ll suck my dick to thank me later.

COOL SHIT 1-19-12

COBRA COMMAND: COBRA #9: All in all, it’s kind of an ordinary issue, but near the middle, we get our first glimpse of how ruthless and evil the new Cobra Commander is. Holy shit, is he a bastard! He’s such a fuck that he scares Major Bludd, and that’s no small thing. I think things are going to get ugly really fast in this new phase of the G.I. Joe universe.

FABLES #113: Truth be told, I’ve been getting kind of bored with this book of late. Ever since they put the Adversary behind them, it’s been going down hill. There were a few cool moments, but for the most part, I think this one’s losing me a little. Yet this issue gives us something different and cool. Willingham gives us four stories of the good ol’ days, none of them related to events now . . . well, except the second one. The reason the Adversary couldn’t attack Fabletown in the past? We find out in this issue. It’s a very cool idea (with an appropriate mundane ending). The only lame one in the bunch, though, is the fourth story, which is pretty stupid. The two stories about the turtle are cool, but it’s that second tale that really kicks ass.

HELLBLAZER #287: All right, so John Constantine goes to hell. Again. So what? A good question. On this tour of hell, everyone’s favorite blue-collar mage sees a few familiar faces. Remember when Constantine used to be tormented by the ghosts of his dead friends? We get to see a return to those good ol’ days with this one. Best part: THE RETURN OF THE FIRST OF THE FALLEN! Yes! Unsurprisingly, Ennis’s run on this book is my favorite, and it’s good to see a few characters from back then again.

CROSSED: PSYCHOPATH #7: Welp, it looks like another Crossed story arc comes to an end. Harold finally reveals himself to his victim for what he really is, and things get really fucking ugly. David Lapham is a nasty bastard, and no one makes it out of this issue whole. And what Amanda does to save herself from Harold? It looks like it belongs in a SAW movie. No shit.



And if this bounty of Cool Shit isn’t enough to make me happy, check out this advertisement from the back of the latest CROSSED. To quote a great man, “I have an erection.”

COOL SHIT 10-13-11

THE STAND: THE NIGHT HAS COME #3: I don’t bring this one up here enough. Honestly, I don’t think I need to. It’s just as good as the book, really. In fact, most of it is the book, Stephen King’s direct words. But the images really are spot on, way better than the TV mini-series. For this alone, you should really be reading this book. It brings THE STAND to life in a way no one else could do, certainly not a movie director. There’s a lot of ground to cover, so it’s abrupt in places, but it’s really a fine, dependable read. Give it a shot.

THE CAPE #2: What is this? A father/son edition of COOL SHIT? At first I was iffy on a sequel to Joe Hill’s THE CAPE. It was an excellent story that really stood on its own. But this new series is really good as we see Eric sink to all new lows. How can a guy who learns he has the ability to fly become such a douchebag? Christ, he’s willing to slit his own mother’s throat and set his brother on fire, simply because he’s jealous. And he’s supposed to be our protagonist? Yeesh.

JENNIFER BLOOD #5: A week can’t pass without me bringing up Garth Ennis. With this issue, we finally find out why Jennifer is killing all of her uncles. Apparently, she’s a daddy’s girl, and can you guess what her uncles did to her old man? To say they pulled a Julius Caesar on him is an understatement. Read this book and see the ugliest knifing you’ve ever seen. Even moreso, read this book to see the most brutal axe murder ever put to the page. Ennis keeps topping himself when it comes to savagery. Perhaps he should start writing CALIGULA after Lapham’s done . . . .

COOL SHIT 10-6-11

I feel stupid.  Something happened to my Cool Shit file, and the post I was going to make today was destroyed beyond all belief.  So . . . I'll wing it.

CALIGULA #4:  Remember how Felix, our protagonist, was buttfucked by a talking horse in the last issue?  Where exactly do you go from there?  And is it possible that he's actually starting to love Caligula?  Lapham's an absolute beast.  There's no telling what he'll do next.

THE WALKING DEAD #89:  It looks like this book is back on track.  For the past few issues, it's been in kind of a lull since they're between story arcs.  But now that people at the Community are threatening to murder Rick before things can get even more fucked up, things are picking up.  Bad news for Glenn:  he walked into the middle of the conspiracy, and now they want to kill him to keep him silent.  Guns come out, shit goes bad, and THE WALKING DEAD is back to being a clusterfuck.  Nice.

THE BOYS #59:  There are just two more story arcs left to this book.  If you want to get on board, now's the time.  It looks like the epic battle between the Seven and the Boys is off, excpet Jack from Jupiter seems to still think the Boys were responsible for releasing the incriminating sex video of him, thereby ruining his career as a supe.  As a result, the Boys suffer a major loss.  Butcher does not take this lightly, and he has visions of gory and terrible retribution in mind.  The conclusion of this issue is fucking ghastly.

COOL SHIT 6-16-11

THAT HELLBOUND TRAIN #1: Holy shit! The Lansdale brothers have teamed up to adapt another iconic Robert Bloch story to the comic book medium! Last time, they tackled “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” with varying degrees of success. This one is all winner, though, especially since they have a much better artist this time. Dave Wachter’s stuff just rocks right off the page. And the train itself? Fucking shit, man. It’s creepy as, um, hell. You gotta’ see it to believe it.

CROSSED: PSYCHOPATH #3: As if the previous issues haven’t been grotesque enough, our favorite psychopath, Lorre, finally gets down to killing people in his group. He splits them up, and while everyone is hiding from the Crossed he has lured into following them, he gets down to getting nasty. Jesus, what he does to one of the characters is downright awful. As always, David Lapham does an over the top job, and Raulo Caceres, an artist with balls of steel, does a disgustingly filthy job. If you’re not reading this book, you’re missing a lot. And you probably have a soul, but whatevs.

HELLBLAZER #280: Ah-ha! Now we’re finally getting back to that missing scene from issue 275. You might remember from my review of that one, I complained about how the pivotal scene of the story wasn’t depicted. Here, we get what we were missing, and now we know the full extent of what Constantine’s double has done to Gemma. This is most definitely her story. It’s been a while since we’ve seen her in action, and it’s good to finally get inside her head. And hey! Check out that cover! Look familiar? If not, then you’re not a longtime Hellblazer fan. Look up issue 93 and compare. I just wish they’d stop pimping the shit out of the Green Lantern movie on their Vertigo books. It looks cheap.

COOL SHIT 5-26-11

STRANGE ADVENTURES #1: I’m not going to say a lot about this anthology because I’m actually going to review it next week for the Napalm Assault. However, there was one story in here I felt I couldn’t review from an objective viewpoint. “All the Pretty Ponies” written by Lauren Beukes and illustrated by Inaki Miranda treads over the same territory as a story I wrote a while ago called “Slummin’ It” (which was published in the first issue of TABARD INN). In my story, rich assholes liked to experience life through the eyes of the homeless. If they pay enough money, they can feel what it’s like to get killed. Well, in this story, Beukes expresses the same idea. A group of the rich and beautiful gather together so they can plug their consciousness into a couple of poverty-stricken people. They call it “going slumming,” and when a rich woman plugs into a kidnapped pregnant woman, she feels cravings and excitedly hopes it’s meth. There is a twist, however, that separates it from my story, in which SPOILER ALERT it is showed that the government keeps a bunch of poor people hooked up to dream machines, in which they imagine that they’re rich and beautiful people. So who is plugging into whom? An answer, by the way, that we never get. END OF SPOILERS. I’m not saying that Beukes ripped me off. My story is based on an old idea (with my own twist, of course). But I thought it would be dishonest of me to review it based on the closeness, so I thought I’d bring it up here. Buy this book, by the way.

CROSSED 3D: Holy shit, William Christensen finally delivered on this book. Granted, he swore it’d be out by April, but what the hell? Better late than never. I have mixed feelings about this book. There are a lot of parallels between CROSSED and zombie books, and it’s totally justified. However, there have been a lot of army versus zombie stuff lately, and this is one of those stories. A group of soldiers go on a rescue mission to Manhattan to bring a doctor back to the people who need her, and shit happens. A lot of shit happens. But nothing very remarkable. There is one very interesting thing that happens, though: a character who accidentally reveals himself to be a racist eventually turns into one of the Crossed, and what is the first thing he does? Starts relentlessly calling out racial epithets. This implies that the Crossed do whatever was in their minds when they were human beings. Which is a frightening thought, when you give it some consideration. Ennis and Lapham are essentially saying that these horrible and vile things are inside all of us, and the only thing that keeps us in check is conscience. The last thing I want to talk about is the 3D effects. A lot of it gets lost because the details are too small for 3D to effectively display, and because a lot of the speech balloons are small, it’s hard to read. It also doesn’t help that whenever the Crossed speak, their words appear in red . . . which doesn’t show up very well in a 3D book. There’s no need for this gimmickry. This book would have been good without it. Still, when it gets the effects right, they’re pretty cool. Some of the bigger panels reveal this very nicely, especially if something huge is going on in the background. It’s good stuff. Not great, but definitely worth the nine bucks it costs. And the 3D glasses are pretty cool; if you wear them, the design makes you look like one of the Crossed.

COOL SHIT 5-12-11

CROSSED: PSYCHOPATH #2: How is it that David Lapham can keep topping himself for grotesqueness in this book? Watching his psychopath, Lorre, work on this group of Crossed survivors is an amazing thing, and shocking. As he relates his relationship with Lori, who was in all probability not a willing participant, one can’t help but feel greasy with shame. And when he relates killing Crossed children in ruthless ways? I wonder if Garth Ennis chose his own successor on this one . . . .

COBRA CIVIL WAR: G.I. JOE #1: All right! The search for the new Cobra Commander is under way! And can it be any cooler? The candidates are few, but the possibilities are endless! All they have to do is score the most G.I. Joe kills, the higher the profile, the better the results. Only a sadistic bastard would come up with this concept, and I’m glad it was Chuck Dixon! There’s only one problem: he kind of pusses out when it comes to killing longtime Joes. So far, the bodycount comprises of only the new guys, soldiers we’ve never heard of before. How about killing off a more important Joe? You already killed Cobra Commander. Why not go balls out?

COOL SHIT 2-24-11

AMERICAN VAMPIRE #12:  After Stephen King left this title a while ago, the story has kind of lagged a little bit.  It never became unreadable, but at the same time it didn’t have much of an effect on me.  And then this issue came screaming down the pike.  Skinner Sweet, sadistic gunslinger turned American vampire, is in a nostalgic mood, so he goes to a Wild West Show.  Some of the performers are people he used to know in the old days, but they’re aged beyond recognition and sporting origin stories with more lies in ‘em than a penis enlargement commercial.  He’s so disappointed by this drivel that he starts to leave when he hears the owner say that one of the performers, Dolly (an ex-sweetheart of Skinner’s), actually turned her beloved in to the law.  This is news to Skinner, and he decides to bring the “good ol’ days” back in a rather gruesome way.

In an unrelated note, am I the only one excited about Avatar’s forthcoming CALIGULA?  Jesus Christ, I’m so fucking hard my erection’s holding up my gut.  Avatar is the ONLY company with the guts to do a book like this.  And the commander-in-chief, William Christensen, is smart enough not to give it to someone like Garth Ennis or Warren Ellis.  They are the finest writers in the industry, but they would put too much thought and philosophy into it.  David Lapham, who has been doing an absolutely hedonistic run on CROSSED, is the perfect choice to write this book.  He’s not afraid to get down and dirty with unacceptable amounts of sexual gore, and as far as I can tell, he does it only for the shock of it.  Normally, that would turn me off, but Lapham has recently been turning his work into roller coasters of meaningless obscenity.  Who else could perfectly write CALIGULA?  (And don’t say Gore Vidal.  He did a wonderful job, but remember that he was working for Penthouse.)  I can’t wait for this one to hit the shelves, and neither should you!  I’ll be at C2E2 this year, and I hope the Avatar booth has a preview!

COOL SHIT 10-14-10

G.I. JOE: ORIGINS #20: David Lapham is writing G.I. JOE?! He kicks off his run with a very interesting idea: that Cobra has its fingers in charity organizations. Only 1% of the International Humanitarian Aid Foundation knows who they really work for. But what stake does Cobra have in this? RECRUITING. You see, Dr. Lester Horvath has come up with a test in order to determine one’s “worth as a human being.” Dr. Horvath is an interesting character because despite the fact that he came up with this test and knows exactly what can come of it, he knows he’s “only a four.” He yearns to meet an eight, and Cobra is about to let that happen. Lapham’s intelligent violence is spread all over these pages. I said it before about Max Brooks’ G.I. JOE books, and I’ll say it about Lapham’s: if you grew up on stories about Duke, Snake Eyes, Stalker, and the rest, you should really check in with the new books. The sensibilities have grown up with you. Although they’re fairly clean, these books are not aimed at kids.

THE TRANSFORMERS #12: Guess what else has grown up with you? Oh yeah. It’s kind of weird reading a book about giant robots arguing foreign policy, but there’s a lot here to sink your teeth into. And believe it or not, they finally found a useful task for Cosmos. As things escalate to an international incident (see how I worked the title of the story arc into this?), Bumblebee gives one of the most emotional speeches an Autobot has ever had to give, even moreso than Optimus Prime himself. In fact, no other Autobot could give this speech. And then there’s the surprise at the end. I won’t say what happens other than a major Transformer gets killed. It comes at the perfect moment, to be honest. I know, I know, no one ever stays dead in the TRANSFORMERS universe, but the sheer power of the timing makes this one of the most memorable moments in the story’s history.

COOL SHIT 9-30-10

Jesus. Another crap week here at Cool Shit. Once again, there is only one book who made the cut, and sad to say, it was just barely. Maybe I’m depressed with the news that DC might be shutting down Vertigo by December. I don’t know. But, here we go with the one good book of the week:



CROSSED: FAMILY VALUES #4: Yeah, I miss Garth Ennis on this series. The new writer, David Lapham, is really good with most things (crime, obviously), but pseudo-zombie apocalypses? Not so much. Ennis can take humanity and make it real, but Lapham sometimes makes it sound too hokey. Still, they share the ability to be extreme. As per usual, the kinda-sorta zombies are ultra-violent, and their words are really ugly, but Lapham falls into the trap so many writers these days are familiar with: the real monsters of this book are the people. Yes, the villains here are ordinary people with guns who want to steal horses from our heroes. Things get nasty, and the main bad guy (a fella’ who looks a bit too much like Alan Moore) sounds exactly like one of the Crossed, especially when he says things like, “I’ll fuck that little girl’s brains through her teeth while the rest of ‘em [pregnant women] bleed out!” It’s a good read (not great), and the art, while sometimes silly, is good enough (I miss Jacen Burrows, too), but ultimately worth the price of admission.