Stuff I Read This Week Episode 16 or Cautionary Tales for Fanboys and Crazy People....

Kick-Ass 3 #1: Okay, I'm just going to go ahead and say it. Kick-Ass needs to die. I'm not quite talking about the character. I mean this story needs to be drowned in the bathtub quickly. The thing that's wrong with everything after the first Kick Ass is that writing satire is like telling a joke. The only real rule is to just tell the joke. Don't explain it. Once you have to explain the joke, it's immediately not funny anymore. When you get bogged down on explaining satire, it becomes obvious you're trying to say something about something.

This story was awesome when Mark Millar simply saying "A guy trying to be Batman in real life would either be dead or in the ICU in a day." It's become painfully obvious that, in its evolution, this series has become a platform for Millar to shoot fanboys in the kneecaps. In parts 1 and 2, at least our protagonists were likeable. In this issue, we get Dave Lizewski standing over his parents' graves in what should have been a sobering reflective moment of character development. Instead, he and his friend are musing about how must look awesome like Batman did. Taking brooding pictures by a family member's tombstone because he thinks it looks badass doesn't make your character relatable or realistic. It makes him an extinction-level asshole. The big upside to this book is, as usual, John Romita Jr.'s artwork, offering the right amount of levity to serious moments and awkwardness to funnier moments. Ultimately, time will tell whether or not Millar can bring closure to something that's really already run its course.

Bottom Line: One part entertaining....two parts beating a dead horse. 7 out of 10.


Daredevil: End of Days #8: Considering the fact that David Mack retweeted and reposted my review of this book last month (No, I'm NEVER going to stop talking about that...deal with it, humans...), I considered the idea that the cool thing to do would be to not review the finale, that it would be like the hero in a movie who kisses the girl, says goodbye and walks away without looking back. But I'm a writer, a blogger and a comic book nerd which is, more or less, a willing forfeit of the chance to be cool. No need to break tradition now.

There are more great things to say about End of Days than there are adjectives meandering about  the English language. It could be argued that the much sought meaning of the word "mapone" came across as slightly anti climactic, but with a book like this, the last thing readers deserved was something they actually expected. Besides, much like in life, the destination wasn't nearly as important as the journey that brought us there. It could be argued (and it almost certainly is) that this miniseries ended on more of a bang than a whimper, but this series ended in a way many superhero titles wouldn't dare to: with a prevailing sense of finality. With many of Marvel's "The End" future vision concepts, although they stay somewhat true to the essence of the highlighted protagonist, at times, they have a tendency to feel dated depending on the changes that character endures. With End of Days, we are offered a story that manages to offer closure while preserving the hard truths that we've come to know of a hero who concerns himself very little with the traditional tropes of heroism when it comes to justice. No matter what crossovers and costume changes may come from other writers over the years, this book makes a timeless, definitive statement about who Daredevil is even if it's not always a trite one.

We see cast of characters who have been as much a part of defining who this character is than the character himself saying goodbye in their own ways, some of which are clear even if they're not reflected through dialogue or action beats. Having said that, one of this issue's biggest weaknesses is the absence of journalist Ben Urich's internal narrative that has been the perfect voice to carry us through this semi-dystopic wasteland of an eulogy to the Man Without Fear. Still, no matter what point of view they offer us, Brian Michael Bendis and David Mack's voices are like old friends taking you for a drive through that part of town you grew up in, showing you how it's changed as well as how it hasn't and never will. And after reviewing two other issues of this book, there is virtually nothing left to say about the top shelf artwork from Klaus Janson and Bill Sienkiewicz. Rarely is there a comic where any given panel or page, if left by itself, could be a poster or printed on a t-shirt. There are no artists better suited to help tell a story like this. If they taught comic books in high school, rest assured that Daredevil: End of Days would be required reading.

Bottom Line: This book raised the bar for comics like a school bully playing "keep away" with your lunchbox. 9.5 out of 10.

Stuff I Read This Week Episode 12 or You Don't Have Superpowers Because You Wouldn't Do Anything Constructive With Them....

A Note From the Writer: I am more than grateful that my little dog and pony review garnered the attention of such a writer as David Mack. However, I am thankful, first and foremost, to you all for continuing to read it. It was really just a side project (at first) that decided, through force of will, to stick around. To thank you all, I wanted to do deviate from the usual schedule for Free Comic Book Day. Doug E. Fresh would call this "crowd participation."

Basically, send me comments, requests, questions on all things comic nerd and I'll talk about them. You can ask them here in the comment area, inbox them, email me or....you know....whatever. I'll try to keep this as fun as possible. Thanks in advance. :-)

Email: letsgetfree13@gmail.comTwitter: @letsgetfree13



And Now.....To The Reviews!!!

Uncanny X-Men #5: I'm just going to start off with the simple truth of what I've gotten from the past two issues. This book is getting weird. Since the events of "Avengers vs. X-Men", Magik has become the wild card of Cyclops' outlaw revolution squad. We haven't seen the full extent of what's she capable of since the Phoenix screwed with her abilities, but it's been suggested for a while that she's the Uncanny team's Thor. Here is where we see her dealing with the ramifications of her unpredictable abilities in a fashion not too unlike how the Scarlet Witch went wrong (or, depending on your point of view, how she was never right to begin with). Brian Bendis, while not making too much of a detour from the ongoing plot, is making a bit of a rest stop to flesh Illyana Rasputin out since she hasn't gotten much focus aside from the occasional "I might be batshit crazy" one liner. We are reintroduced to an old unexpected villain which seems like a "make-up appearance" after a semi lackluster third act battle during Bendis' run on New Avengers. Here, he is given the "holy shit" factor that a baddie of his caliber deserves. One of the high points for this book was the S.H.I.E.L.D. meeting in which Maria Hill groans in the wake of the the X-Men "dropping the mic on the Avengers like it's 8 Mile." I have to appreciate Bendis' ability to make the Avengers either look like jackbooted thugs or spoiled punks who tuck their collective tails between their legs and "don't feel like talking about it" when they get owned. It's good to be able to handle characters realistically while still letting the reader know who's boss in their book.

Frazier Irving's art come across as a sudden, slightly out of place change for this book. The switch itself is already a bit distracting, but his style feels a little messy and too all over the place for my tastes. I also take issue with nobody being able to decide on a baseline set of characteristics for Cyclops' face with the mask off.

Bottom Line: This book suffers no illusions in the fact that it's semi filler. But it's good filler. 7.5 out of 10

Jupiter's Legacy #1: I was going out of my way to not pick up a mainstream superhero title when I bought this and winced when I figured out it was one. But I shouldn't have. Mark Millar has an interesting penchant for being able to introduce superhero archetypes into a world closer to the one we live in. It's a theme he seems to have gotten progressively great at as times goes on and this title, thus far, is the proof. 

Whereas Spider Man will break off a date to go fight crime with little remorse, many of the superpowered people in this world are more likely to wait until their iTunes download of Scandal finishes before running off to beat up on the alien would-be conqueror. And let's face it. That's about right. How many times have you asked someone to do something first thing in the morning and received "Not until I've had my coffee" as a reply? That's just taking out the trash or putting WD-40 on the door hinge. I shudder to think how fucked we'd be if a planet sized meteor were hurtling towards Earth.

This book centers around a generation of Golden Age heroes with a stiff moral code that seems to be getting left in the dust. The setup seems to be leaning towards questioning whether or not the current generation will be up to the responsibility of fighting for good. So far, Millar's answer seems to be a "No" so big, The Rock couldn't lift it. To his credit, doesn't just judge the Twitter era from the cheap seats like an old codger shaking his fist from his porch. He goes behind enemy lines and asks, "Can you blame them? You guys had Hitler to deal with. They have Justin Bieber." Frank Quitely's artwork is, as usual, a godsend to compliment Millar's story appropriately, stirring realism and a powerful sense of the unbelievable into an alphabet soup that's hard to ignore. Though it seems to make you wish for a slightly stronger action beats, it seems to do everything right as far as inaugural issues go.

Bottom Line: Mark Millar is definitely at the top of his game while making you wish you had superpowers and hope your roommate never does all at the same time. 9 out of 10.


East of West #2: Jonathan Hickman is certainly swinging for the fences with this one. He brings a fresh, unapologetic voice to the pantheon of dystopian future visions with his unconventional saga of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War, Famine and Conquest are still on a bloody tear through this brave new world, jumpstarting the end of civilization as we know it. Meanwhile, Death, their fourth, goes on a similarly bloodlustful revenge run. This is the kind of sci-fi/fantasy work Hickman was born to do and the kind of quirky, badass characters he was born to write. The body count's still pretty high, but the story seems to be getting slightly more coherent as pieces of the endgame peek out from under the cracks of maiming, mauling and lush environments that keep your eyes bulging out from their sockets thanks to Nick Dragotta's masterful artwork and shrewd coloring. The first issue was ambitious and slightly experimental, but the sophomore effort is coming across more of a uniformed venture.

Bottom Line: All there was to appreciate last time has been magnified more as the plot begins to come together. 8.5 out of 10.