GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #933: VERTIGO DIED, LONG LIVE VERTIGO

 

I've told the story so many times you're probably sick of it, but for some of my newer readers (welcome!), when I was a kid I did not like superhero comics. They were all right, but I was more interested in GI Joe and Transformers comics. When they ended Transformers I felt betrayed and gave up on comics. Fast forward to my senior year in high school when my friend, CJ (who since has worked for Universal, I believe, as a model and is currently a stand-up comedian), put the trade of Evil Ernie: Youth Gone Wild into my hands, and suddenly I was back into comics. I have every Chaos! Comic ever (except for the fake ones Dynamite made), but my favorite publisher in those days was DC's imprint, Vertigo. Preacher was the second comic CJ put into my hands, and from there I took off with a heavy interest in the things Vertigo published.

Then Vertigo died, and DC tried doing Black Label books for adult readers, but the problem was, the Black Label books were all superhero books, and I still, to this very day, dislike superhero comics. There are exceptions, like Watchmen (and I don't know what the rest of the world is talking about, but as far as I'm concerned Watchmen ended in the 'Eighties) and The Boys. I gleefully own the Azzarello Batman Black Label book where they showed Batman's batdick (which they edited out of subsequent reprints), but that's where my enjoyment of the Black Label stuff ends.

Lo! and behold! DC is bringing Vertigo back! I thought that was great news, even if the titles they revealed don't look all that great. One is a DC reprint, which does not speak highly of this great return.

Remember yesterday when I posted a link to Mark Millar interviewing Garth Ennis? It's super long, and I posted it only for those interested in what anyone else would consider a slog. Hidden in that interview, however, is Garth Ennis's assessment of why Vertigo was initially killed.

If you don't know, DC is owned by Warner Bros. Warner, ever hungry for more comic book movies, wanted to raid DC's back issues for movie ideas. Some Warner exec stumbled upon these great books being published by Vertigo and wanted to make movies out of them. Except for one problem: DC actually doesn't own the rights to those books. They are creator owned. That generation of comics writers actually listened to Alan Moore and insisted on owning their own stories.

Someone explained this to the exec, who then responded, "Then why are we publishing these books? Fuck 'em. Get rid of the imprint." And so Vertigo died.

Which makes utter sense. I found myself talking with my comics guys about this today when a fellow customer mentioned that they were reviving Vertigo. Before I could even think, these words were out of my mouth: "I'll bet they're not going to be creator owned."

That first title, as I said, is a reprint of a DC book. DC books are definitely owned by DC. The second title is a continuation of that first title. Things aren't looking good, folks. I'm going to keep my eye out for other books they announce. If they, too, are not creator owned, then resurrecting Vertigo will be a waste of everyone's time.

There's a reason I don't read DC or Marvel books. I think they suck. I have zero interest in Batman beating the shit out of the mentally ill. I have zero interest in the teenage jerk off fantasies that Spider-Man embodies. I have even less interest in two-fisted battles across the galaxy. I parodied that nonsense with the war at the end of And Jesus Came Back. I have a character using the Empire State Building as a club, for fuckssake.

There are exceptions of course. For the last few months I've read a Marvel book, but it was Get Fury. Neither Nick Fury nor Frank Castle are superheroes, though. It ended recently, so I'm back to reading zero Marvel books. I'm also reading a DC book, but it's Hellblazer: Dead in America, and I've been following John Constantine's adventures for two decades plus. That may have ended today, though. What we got in issue ten could be an ending or a to-be-continued. Hard to say.

I'll be interested in seeing *who* wants to work with the new Vertigo. I don't think I'm going to see any of the usual creatives I follow, but if I do, then maybe I'm wrong in my assessment. More likely I'll see their names attached to Image projects, though. Time will tell.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #835: THE BEST COMIC BOOK OF THE WEEK IS . . .

 . . . all of my books. They were great, each and every one of them. And I am so happy to have something other than my misery to talk about, I'm going to do an old school cool-shit type GF tonight. If you weren't with me back in the day, every Thursday I would post a Cool Shit talking about my favorite comics of the week. There are spoilers, as this is not a review series. It's just me talking about cool shit. So let's start!

JAMES BOND 007 #4: Shockingly enough the least excited I was for a book this week was for a Garth Ennis book. That is very much unlike me. I like in this book that Bond mentions that M is not the M that's always been with us, but that people fill in the role. He's distrustful of the current M. He currently trusts only Moneypenny because he's known her the longest. He's just returned from space and will soon be working with Felix again in the very near future.

TRANSFORMERS #7: Starscream is one of my favorite Transformers. He's a weasel. He will do anything to be in charge of the Decepticons, and curiously he actually is their leader in this new series. Megatron has yet to show his face in this series, although he's depicted in another as out of working order. How did he get that way? Did Starscream have something to do with it? I'm sure we'll find out. But Soundwave just challenged Starscream's leadership. Starscream is at his best when he's using words as weapons, but Soundwave much prefers to use weapons as weapons, and he's not above cheating. It reminded me a little of how Roland the Gunslinger bested Cort in the Dark Tower series. While it seems Image is not afraid to kill some Transformers, I wouldn't count Starscream out yet. I'm sure he'll be back.

COBRA COMMANDER #4: Cobra Commander is a lot like Starscream, and not just because the two characters were voiced by the same actor back in the 'Eighties. I'm glad that Nemesis Enforcer is around and beating the mortal shit out of the Dreadnoks, but the best part of this issue was Cobra Commander's sudden realization that he wasn't the main character of his own book. Like Starscream, he's got tricks up his sleeve. In a fair fight there is no way he'd be able to defeat NE. Luckily he's very adept at cheating. I think the next issue is the last. Too bad. I'm very much enjoying this one.

QUICK STOPS VOL 2 #4: I never thought I'd need to hear an origin story for Mooby, but goddam! I'm very happy this exists. In the final part of the story Kevin Smith ratchets up the action to a ridiculous level. I never thought I'd see Jay beat the daylights out of an elderly naked Satanist lady wearing a Mooby golden calf mask, but that's the world I currently live in. (I didn't expect Silent Bob to snap a selfie with her after, either. He's a man of few words, and his actions speak volumes.) It's good to see that the Quick Stop has a plaque commemorating Dante Hicks, but in pure Randal fashion, it's at the coffee station with a sign declaring Dante *was* supposed to be here today. This is probably the last issue, but I'm hoping for a volume 3.

HELLBLAZER: DEAD IN AMERICA #4: I don't talk about it often, but I'm fully on board with this new incarnation of Hellblazer. It feels like the Vertigo Hellblazer of old. It's more in tune with Jamie Delano's version of Constantine rather than Ennis's. There's even a nod to the original series in this issue. John is still a walking dead man, but it seems he's finally got Swamp Thing on the same page with him. It was good to see ol' Con-job pulling a scam on people, and to have it not work out for him? It was kind of funny. What I very much liked was how the people he was scamming, who had covered up the rape and murder of a teenage girl by the high school football team, got their comeuppance when they all were cursed to relive her final moments for hours in one night. It's not often that John does something good. Usually it's an accident while doing something very self-centered, but this was good work.

I feel a lot better for having written this one. It reminded me what fun was like, and fun has been running very low around here. This will be the last GF for a while, now that I'm at 835, which was my goal. Hopefully my life will stop sucking so much soon, and I can get back to having fun. Living with overwhelming stress 24/7--and I mean 24/7, I can't even escape from it in my dreams--is not helpful and needs to stop ASAP.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #357: DEATH SQUAD!

 

One day my comics guy recommended this book to me. The thing that sold me was that Garth Ennis had given it a cover blurb. Then I realized that it was an old UK comic book, and that the art was fan-fucking-tastic. So I bought it.

It took me a while to get around to it, but when I did I was awestruck. This is a great war comic, but it's also very unconventional. You can very much see that Ennis's own war books were inspired directly by this story. You see, the heroes of this one are Nazis.

Right. I know. Once I realized that they were the ones I should be rooting for, I was turned off by it. But somehow I wound up liking this group of no-gooders, as BATTLE described them. Only one of them is a true Nazi, and none of them seem to be aware of the genocide their beloved Fuhrer was committing. No, these guys were doomed to the Punishment Battalions. They were called Strafbattalion in real life. And no, they didn't deal out punishment. Being in the squad WAS punishment. The Nazis made sure that these battalions were made up of fuckups and criminals and psychopaths because their job was to NOT survive. High Command sent these poor bastards into the wintry hellscape of Russia to soften up the Eastern Front. The expectation was that they would give their lives to kill as many Russians as possible so the real soldiers could sweep through and kill the remaining combatants.

As you can imagine, being forced into a situation like that did not do well for their morale. They had to develop tough skins and insanely dark senses of humor to survive.

And that's what our main characters do in DEATH SQUAD. These are funny bastards, but their humor is viciously evil. It's very clear that they don't want to be doing these things. In fact, when they finally get rewarded with a vacation, it turns into a brutal battle for survival against British troops raiding a town where the Germans placed their laziest soldiers. The Brits didn't count on Death Squad being there . . .

There are genuinely uncomfortable moments here, like when Grandad has to execute his idol and friend. Or when one of the members of Death Squad gets his back broken by a vicious Russian torturer only to be taken captive by freedom fighters because he looks like one of the Fuhrer's most trusted henchmen. And . . . holy fuck. The writer had this published under a penname. He says it was because he already had other stories being told in BATTLE, but I highly suspect that he didn't want his name connected to a group of Nazi protagonists.

Reading this collection of all the BATTLE stories of these no-gooders kind of makes me want to write about a similar group, but definitely not from the Nazi perspective. I'd kind of like trying my hand at writing an American version of these guys because when immediate death is inevitable, nothing is sacred. It would be interesting to sit in the mind of a person like that.

It's a fun story. The bonus chapters suck, but the story itself? Pure fun.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #311: THE THREE GARTH ENNIS BOOKS I MISSED

 Earlier today I talked about how difficult it was for an author I love to publish something and get past me. I remember earlier this year finally having money again after not working since Jan. 3, so I went to get my comics from my guy. Garth Ennis is my favorite comics writer of all time. So I figured I'd have a few new books from him.

Nope. But I did have the new series about The Boys, which was called Dear Becky. It's fucking great. Read it, even if you're not into the Prime series. It's the perfect level of insanity and melancholy.

But here's the thing: Ennis had three other books that came out this year. It slipped past me and my guy. In total, we're talking about 15 single issues that none of us knew about. I picked up the trades, and on Wednesday, I'm going to tell my guy about them. He loves Ennis, but his brother really, really loves Ennis's war books. They're all great, but I suspect I know why no one knows about them.

They are not technically part of War Stories. But they are war stories. I want to talk about them, but there are spoilers. So don't read this unless you already read the three books in question: The Stringbags, Out of the Blue and Sara.

I didn't expect much from The Stringbags, but I think this one made me cry the most. I know a lot about WWII, but I never heard about these guys. The technical name for their planes were Swordfish. They were all UK pilots, navigators and rear gunners. The problem is, they were stuck with these antique planes that were made more from cloth than anything else. They were just heavy enough to haul whatever they had to haul. In this case, it was torpedoes. You had to be either very brave or very insane to fly these fucking things. And here we have Archie, Ollie and Pops, the crew of their Swordfish. Archie is very serious and very good at his job. Ollie is certifiably insane and brave and relies on humor to get through the overwhelming violence they have to deal with. Pops is the vet who is equal measures of courage and humor but is also the guy who tries to talk sense into everyone else, even when they are on the ground. (And yes, he usually buys the drinks.) While these guys are fictional, they have very real counterparts, and for some crazy reason, the UK threw these lunatics at the fucking Bismarck. For real. The fiction story is told here, but it essentially really happened.

And then there was their last mission. The UK, knowing fully that any Swordfish they sent against the Germans in this situation would absolutely 100% die, sent them against the Germans. And all of them except for 5 died. They literally flew into Nazi guns just to drop their torpedoes and die. The UK fighters that backed them up later talked about the horror of having to watch these men literally and horribly die slow fiery deaths. For nothing. Hitler's stupid plan of running his battleships through the English Channel to German ports actually succeeded. But fuck him. The real men of the German army were shocked by the sheer bravery of these Englishmen. And they would give them praise long after these Englishmen died at their hands.

The last scene of the book is when Archie suddenly wakes up after being brutally shot. He keeps talking to Ollie and Pops as he tries to finish his mission before he dies. He says, "Chaps, we're almost there." Having no idea that Ollie and Pops are riddled with bullets and dead behind him.

I have tears running down my cheeks right now.

Out of the Blue. While not a War Story, it takes a character from the Avatar War Story books. Coincidentally named Archie, he's a UK pilot who was shot down in Russia and told his mates that he would go through Hell because there is a woman back home. Now he is married to that woman, and he's coming back to the UK but because of some cock up, while landing he accidentally crashes into two other British fighters and kills them all. It is absolutely not his fault, but the CO (do the UK call their commanding officers COs?) 100% blames him and sticks him with the worst ship in the fleet, the Bitch with a T. No matter how well planned things are with this plane, it always fucks up at least something vital during a mission. No one's fault. Sometimes tech just does that to you. Archie is also stuck with this navigator who is supposed to suck, but it turns out that he's from India, and the CO doesn't like him because he's not white. Naturally, Archie and Ranjaram make good friends and good shipmates. But the CO still wants to make things difficult for Archie, so he does his level best to fuck Archie's wife. And Archie, not being confident in his social skills (but being a ruthless fucking captain when he's going after Nazis to the point where Ranjaram suggests he might be schizo) almost fucks his marriage up.

But because it's an Ennis story, and I highly suspect that Ennis is a secret not-so-secret romantic, he figures it out. Just in time, as it turns out, since she's "up the duff" with his child.

Don't get high hopes. Remember, Ennis is great at war tragedy stories. This ends no differently than you expect. There is some hope, but chances are, Archie might have survived. Ranjaram . . . maybe not so much. You'll have to look at that last panel and decide for yourself.

Of all three books, I felt I was most prepared for Sara. Ennis is a huge fan of the female Russian participation in WWII. If you doubt me, read his story about the Night Witches. It's more or less true, and it's a great fucking story. This time he highlights the great female Russian snipers. I love reading their stories. Look this shit up. Don't just trust me. If you don't read about this, you might not believe it.

Sara is about a group of Russian female snipers after a Nazi supersniper. Of all three, I thought I knew how this would go best. I was fucking wrong. This might be the most tragic, yet the most heroic of the bunch. Because Sara is the Russian version of the supersniper. And she goes off on her own to get this fucking guy, mostly to save her sisters from having to do it themselves.

And there's the tragic ending. She finds him, but she only gets his second. And the actual guy shoots her mortally. And as she's dying, she has this vision of her sisters getting old and having families and knowing it's all just bullshit. But! She knows this guy will want to see the Russian woman who bagged 300 of his Nazi brothers. So as she's dying, she turns over and puts a live grenade under her, knowing that this guy will turn her onto her back. And there he is, approaching in the background in the final panel of the book,

WWII stories have a special place in my heart. Everyone seems to believe that this was the one good war in the scope of the world. And obviously I hate Nazis almost as much as Indiana Jones. I look back on stories I wrote as a kid, some when I was as young as five years old, and some of them had Nazis as the worst villains ever, so this concept is nothing new to me.

But goddammit,. Garth Ennis writes the best war stories. Dear Billy is probably my favorite (it's a Battlefields arc), but he never fails to nail me through the fucking heart.

THE JOHN BRUNI MUSEUM OF MEDIOCRE (AT BEST) SHIT #27: REVIEW OF PREACHER #63

[My final comic book review for the Elmhurst College Leader. It wasn’t the last thing I would do for them. They invited me to write a few pieces for the summer edition. Some of them will be reprinted here. Others are so irrelevant to me that I’ll keep ‘em in the vault. It’s funny. When the last issue of Preacher came out, I didn’t really think about this review, but a couple of things stick out. The line about Jesse had better be dead before Tulip wakes up: yeah, that came true. Sort of. The other thing is my invitation to the student body to take over my role as a comic book reviewer. Guess what: no one wanted the fucking job. I’ll bet if I did this today, they would line up for it. This is from the May 8, 2000 edition. Just a couple of weeks later, I would graduate with a Bachelors Degree in the Arts.]

There’s no doubt about it: Garth Ennis is the greatest comic book writer working in the business. Steve Dillon is, due to the recent death of Steven Hughes, the greatest comic book artist working in the business. Their comic book, Preacher, is the best title in the business.

Unfortunately, it’s coming to an end this July.

True to Preacher history, Ennis and Dillon are keeping everything completely charged with tension in this last story arc, Alamo. Preacher #63 (part 5 of 7) brings us one of the most horrifying moments in the comic’s history, if you know the characters well. Ennis starts the issue out with the Rev. Jesse Custer talking with longtime girlfriend, Tulip, about the best and worst days of his life. The worst, as any loyal Preacher reader will know, is the day Jody shot Tulip in the head. In order to get Jesse off His back, God gave Tulip life again to show Jesse how much He cares. (He really doesn’t, He’s just scared Jesse’s going to beat the hell out of him.) Now, as Jesse and Tulip talk (naturally, in bed), Tulip reveals that God never saved her at all because “God’s a bastard.” Suddenly, blood is pouring down her face, and the back of her skull is a pulpy mess.

Luckily for Jesse, the image is just a dream, but it comes out of nowhere, and for people who have known these characters for years, it is a genuinely scary moment. Another moment only loyal readers will appreciate is when Jesse breaks one of his promises to Tulip by leaving her to go face the bad guys (this also happened way back in the third year of Preacher). Not only does he leave her, he also drugs her to make sure she can’t follow him into the danger he’s about to put himself into. All that can be said is that Jesse better be dead when she wakes up, because if he isn’t, she’s going to eviscerate him. (It should be noted that last time he did this, Tulip handcuffed him naked to a bed for hours on end while she went to hang out with a friend.)

Another character in very hot water is the unfortunate Hoover. He’s been through a lot. After he arranged for his boss to be anally raped (he thought he was buying him a woman), he was nearly killed. In fact, Starr has always treated him harshly despite his innocent ways. When he confronted Jesse, the reverend used his Word of God to make him count grains of sand on a beach until he reaches three million (Hoover spent years out there, going insane). Now about a hundred pounds lighter and lacking a great deal of his teeth, he still has his innocent (if lunatic) ways. He plays a joke on Starr, which results in Starr getting black rings around his eyes from binoculars before going in to prep his army (about two dozen men; Jesse, Tulip, Cassidy, and the Saint of Killers killed the rest of them) for the final battle to be held at the Alamo. Needless to say, being embarrassed in front of his own men has set Starr off on a rampage which will most likely end with Hoover’s crucifixion, which is really too bad, considering of all the bad guys in the history of Preacher, he is actually incapable of evil. He can’t even bring himself to swear.

The ultimate high of this issue, though, is Jesse’s last talk with John Wayne. To anyone who grew up watching the Duke kickin’ butt on TV, seeing Wayne in Preacher is a real treat. When he pulls Jesse’s father’s words out of Jesse, there is no one who wouldn’t want John Custer as a father. “Don’t take no shit off fools . . . an’ you judge a person by what’s in ‘em, not how they look. An’ you do the right thing. You gotta’ be one of the good guys, son; ‘cause there’s way too many of the bad.” Those are hard words to live by, and the only thing to do is try. Not even Jesse, who is one of the last true American heroes left (oddly enough, written by an Irishman), can live up to those words (after all, he did leave Tulip twice). There is no better feeling in the world than to hear the Duke utter his last words to Jesse: “Hell, pilgrim, I’m just a . . . a broke-down, wore-out ol’ cowboy . . . but this broke-down, wore-out ol’ cowboy wanted ya ta know: He’s prouda’ ya.” And then he’s gone, walking off into his final sunset.

Speaking of sunsets, this broken-down, worn-out ol’ college student is graduating, which means the spot for comic book reviewer is open for next fall. If any of you pilgrims got the sand to step up to a job writing reviews that most people won’t even read, then you better let Grand Journalism Wizard Wiginton know. Sure, no one will probably read it aside from Wiginton and editors, but you can win state conference awards, and you’ll be known as the second comic book reviewer at any college in Illinois ever. Of course, it’s completely understandable if you don’t have the balls . . .

Remember to be a good guy. There’s way too many of the bad. Got it? Good.

THE JOHN BRUNI MUSEUM OF MEDIOCRE (AT BEST) SHIT #22: REVIEW OF MARVEL KNIGHT'S PUNISHER #1

[This one isn’t so bad. I genuinely loved Ennis’s work on The Punisher. I loved it even more when they had the MAX series. And I’m super grateful that Ennis is at it again currently. The man was born to write Punisher. This appeared in the Elmhurst College Leader on February 22, 2000.]

Not long ago, Marvel killed their greatest superhero off, which wasn’t wise, considering their lack of good heroes. In the tradition of killing superheroes, though, they brought him back from the dead. That is usually a bad move, but in this case, it was ten times worse. Why? Because that hero was the Punisher, and in resurrecting him, they brought a great deal of the supernatural into a story where the supernatural has absolutely no right to exist. All of a sudden, the Punisher had glowing eyes and worked for angels killing the scum of the earth.

Luckily, this didn’t last long. Now, with all that silly bullshit out of the way, writer Garth Ennis (Preacher, Hitman) takes up the reins with the new number one issue of Marvel Knights’s The Punisher. As the ad says, “No capes, no masks, no mercy.” Finally, the Punisher, aka Frank Castle, has returned to the basics.

Steve Dillon, who worked on Preacher and Hellblazer with Ennis, has also joined the team, allowing his work to be inked, which almost never happens. Dillon’s work, which has been going a bit downhill in Preacher, looks excellent with Jimmy Palmiotti’s complimentary inking. The only bit of bad artwork is the cover by Tim Bradstreet, who can definitely do better. His covers for Unknown Soldier and Hellblazer were much better.

Anyone who knows Ennis and Dillon’s work will certainly know that they are the perfect people for the job. First of all, Dillon’s work is stark reality. Unlike other artists who tend to make their characters look inhumanly muscular, Dillon shows real people. This is the world of Frank Castle—dark, gritty reality.

Ennis, an avid fan of Clint “Blow ‘Em Away” Eastwood and John Woo movies, has shown his flair for writing action sequences time and time again. Think back on all the times he’s shown the Saint of Killers killing platoons of people in the pages of Preacher, whether they be cops or people in tanks. Think back to the ghastly Stein and his fighting methods in Pride and Joy. Think back on all those shoot-up scenes in Unknown Soldier.

Ennis does not disappoint Punisher fans. There’s Big Frank on the very first page holding a gun to some guy’s head with the bodies of scumbags at his feet. When the guy gets the idea to push the drugs that the dead scumbags won’t be able to push, Frank walks up behind him and makes his head do a complete 180 turn. He then torches the drugs, the money, and the bodies in the typical Punisher style.

Or how about the morgue shoot-out scene? Guns, explosives, and lots of corpses to hide behind. There may have been bodies there when Frank walked in, but there certainly were more of them by the time he left.

To cap the first issue off, Frank throws a man off the top of the Empire State Building while he just stands there reflecting about how he came back, waiting for the grisly SPLAT! Apparently, when he died, the angels thought they could use him as Marvel’s version of the Saint of Killers, punishing the sinners, but, as Frank says, “Tried it. Didn’t like it. Told them where to stick it.” Cast back down into his grimy, murderous world, Frank’s having fun blowin’ away punks. The first issue has an approximate body county of 18, and that’s a minimum.

Some could say that this is a bit excessive. Ennis takes this issue up in a note at the end of the issue, “In Defence of the Punisher.” He said, “I can see why Frank’s little hobby might be viewed as requiring some kind of justification. But only by morons.” He brings up the humor of “Itchy and Scratchy,” then moves on to the body count of scumbags in The Killer, and finally backing everything up with Dirty Harry and his crime fighting methods. Truth be told, the people Frank kills are true scum—they aren’t generally good people slipping into a world of crime out of necessity or accident. These are the people who would kill children if the little tykes were in their way. They would murder, rape, steal, etc. their way to their desires. These are beyond a shadow of a doubt bad people. Did anyone feel bad when Dirty Harry blew away the killer in the end of the first movie?

Finally, there’s someone who will make these punks crawl back into whatever wretched womb that spawned them. Whether he shoots, stabs, strangulates, or simply throws people off the Empire State Building, the Punisher is back in action. Welcome back, Frank, says the world.