Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

So, this is the great American graphic novel? This is the best comic ever created? Man, those dicks at DC must think we’re fucking stupid or something if we’d actually think this shit is any good. This is, without a doubt, the worst fucking comic I’ve ever read. We’re talking Skate Man bad here.

Chapter One
Pages 1-4: A fucking pan up? Lazy. And what’s with the nine-panel grid? Boring. The whole damn book better not be like that. What a way to insult the audience right off, with the dullest, most pedestrian page layout possible. It shows a complete lack of imagination.

And what’s with the cops? This is a super-hero book, not some damn cop drama. Let’s focus on the actual characters.

Pages 5-8: God, I hope Moore isn’t being paid by the word. No dialogue. Not even a damn thought-balloon. What kind of comic is this?

Pages 9-13: If Moore is pulling the kind of crap I think he’s pulling he should be ashamed of himself. This is a completely disrespectful way to treat characters of such depth and complexity and rich history as the Blue Beetle and the Question.

Page 17: Okay, Moore doesn’t get it. Peter Cannon would not call the Peacemaker a Nazi. No, no way. This is shit and completely disrespectful.

Pages 20-23: Either Moore or Gibbons must be a fag, because I can’t imagine why so much attention is being paid to making sure we see that Captain Atom is naked.

Pages 27-32: More laziness. Apparently Moore isn’t a good enough writer to think of a way to include back-story in the comic itself and had to put a damn “supplemental guide” into the book. LAZY!

Chapter Two
Pages 6-7: Fucking disgusting! Not only is this completely unnecessary, but it’s offensive. Rape has no place in a super-hero comic. I read super-hero comics to escape from reality, not to wallow in filth and perversion. Maybe Moore gets off on this sort of thing, but he’s clearly a pervert.

Pages 9-18: And Moore hates America, apparently. Not only is this a complete and total disregard for the actual nature of the Peacemaker, but this is just stupid, liberal, anti-American propaganda. Hello, we were in Vietnam for a reason people. The commies weren’t just going to give up on their own!

Chapter Three
Pages 1-3: More of characters completely unimportant to the narrative given attention. And what’s with this pirate comic. Why would kids want to read pirate comics? Oh sure, maybe a pervert like Moore likes them, but real Americans won’t. It’s completely unreal.

Page 13: Three issues in and this is the first real action sequence we get? And it’s interrupted by more anti-American propaganda by Moore.

Page 20: Fucking disgusting. Penises have no place in super-hero comics. Clearly this is an adults-only comic, but it’s not labeled as such. DC should be ashamed of themselves for publishing this filth.

Pages 29-32: Okay, this is getting fucking ridiculous. More background that apparently is necessary to the story that Moore couldn’t’ find a way to work into the narrative. And this is after how many pages of Captain Atom just walking around and not doing anything. Lazy, lazy, lazy!

Chapter Four
Page 3: I am so sick of comics writers trying to talk about physics as if they understand anything. Like some watch-maker is going to understand the theory of relativity. Completely unrealistic and throws me out of the story.

And the sad thing is, this would be a perfectly acceptable new origin for Captain Atom if it wasn’t tainted by the sex and perversion and anti-American propaganda. But it should have been the first issue, not number four.

Chapter Five
Page 7: Child murder. More filth and perversion.

Page 9: More pirate shit. Why does Moore keep insisting on interrupting the flow of the story with this pretentious, extra bull-shit?

Pages 14-15: It takes all this time for something to break up the damn nine panel grid. Gibbons must have gotten sick of following that ego-maniac’s Moore’s directions.

Page 20: Enough of this pirate shit!

Pages 29-32: Goddamit! Moore is gay for pirates! This shit adds nothing to the story! It’s just Moore’ ego forcing his pet projects into the story.

Chapter Six
Pages 1-32: This is just filth. Never have I seen such a willful disregard of a creator’s purpose. This is not the Question. This is some rabid anti-American pervert’s filthy distortion of a living creator’s greatest work. This is disgusting and reprehensible. Moore and everyone at DC owe Steve Ditko an apology. They are not fit to lick the dirt from his shoes, and yet they go and distort his work to make it into this ugly, lewd traitorous condemnation of American values and decent, God-fearing morality.

Chapter Seven
Pages 1-10: I’d almost think this was good, if it wasn’t done to death and completely unnecessary. So Blue Beetle and Nightshade talk about Beetle’s equipment. Great. This sort of thing is more appropriate to a paragraph or two in Who’s Who than ten pages in a comic.

Pages 23-26: Well, it’s about damn time one of the super-heroes in this comic actually did something super-heroic. Somebody in DC editorial must have forced this scene into the book so that Moore wouldn’t completely pervert all of the Charlton characters into disgusting caricatures.

Page 27: Oh, ha-ha, an ejaculation joke. I guess Moore just couldn’t resist putting more perversion into the comic.

Pages 29-32: Again with the nonsense that doesn’t add to the story at all. And why would the Blue Beetle give a rat’s ass about fucking owls?

Chapter Eight
Pages 1-28: Eight chapters before the plot actually has anything happen in it? I’ve heard of padding for the trade, but this is fucking ridiculous. So the first seven chapters were all, what, prologue? See, if Moore were a good writer everything that happens in this chapter would have been spread out over the first seven. But no, he spends seven chapters on his liberal propaganda and perversion before he starts running out of issues and actually has to have the story start.

Pages 29-32: And yet more anti-American propaganda. This cartoonish caricature of real American values is insulting and infuriating. I’m sorely tempted to forward a copy of this trash to a real American like Bill O’Reilly. I’d like to see Moore try to defend his filth against a real intellectual might like his.

Chapter Nine
Pages 1-28: And all that momentum built up in the last issue spoiled. Just a long look at a secondary, D-list character like Nightshade. I mean, you’ve only got twelve issues, and you’ve already padded it out, not to mention filling it with filth, and then you go and waste an issue with Captain Atom and his side-kick talking about her feelings. Waste of paper.

Chapter Ten
Pages 1-28: Christ! How much padding did Moore do? This entire issue is nothing but Blue Beetle and Question moving from one location to another. With, of course, plenty of interruptions from that stupid pirate comic that nobody cares about! And then to set-up Peter Canon as the villain? How stupid is that? Moore just doesn’t get. He. Just. Doesn’t. Get. It. This isn’t as serious as the disgusting changes made to Peacemaker and the Question, but it is part of a pattern. He just hates super-heroes. He has no respect for them. Why on Earth DC would give a man like that the opportunity to write a super-hero comic escapes me.

Chapter Eleven
Pages 6, 9, 13, 20, 23: More of this nonsense with characters that nobody cares about and that stupid, pointless pirate comic.

Pages 7, 8, 10, 11: Moore clearly rushing to get out some sort of “important” information. If he’s just done the origins of the characters at the start of the series, like he should have, and paced himself better instead of continually padding the comic with stupid, extraneous information that nobody cares about he wouldn’t have had to so badly rush everything at the end. This is not just laziness, this is bad writing.

Pages 18, 19, 21, 22, 24-26: This is just a colossal insult to the intelligence of the reader. It reeks of comic book clichés. If Peter Canon is the big villain (and it makes no sense at all that he would be), why waste all his time explaining his plan to the Blue Beetle and the Question? It’s stupid. It’s the worse cliché in comics. And people think this is good writing?

Page 27: And this is even dumber a revelation. “Oh, I already did it. Nyah-nyah-nyah! You can’t beat me!” It’s a juvenile cop-out and further evidence that Moore is just an adolescent mind spitting on the noble legacy of the Charlton characters simply because he happens to personally not like them.

Chapter Twelve
Pages 1-6: Six splash pages! What is this, an Image book? I’m surprised I didn’t have to turn the page side-ways for any of these panels. Clearly Gibbons was just trying to sucker his pans out of more money by making some extra splash pages he can sell at conventions.

Pages 17-20: And this is completely implausible. Peter Canon’s plan made no sense, and it’s just a cop-out to have it “work.” It just gives Moore an excuse to end the story without any of the characters facing any consequences for their actions and just serves as a further example of his disregard for the characters and their creators. Moore doesn’t like super-heroes, and he doesn’t respect the creators, so of course they have to lose. Juvenile bullshit.

Pages 23, 24: And this is the final insult. Moore perverted the Question into his pet anti-American stereotype, and so the lone voice of morality must be killed. Honestly, there was no point in finishing the book at this point. I don’t care how it ends. This was just insulting.

Daredevil by Brian Michael Bendis
Daredevil spends twenty-two pages getting the kettle out of the cup-board, boiling water, and steeping the tea. Occasionally there is a one or two panel flash-back to him fighting zombie ninjas.

Kabuki by David Mack
In a twelve-issue maxi-series, Kabuki makes a cup of tea. At least, that’s what Kabuki fans say she did. Nobody else has the patience to figure out what the hell is going on.

Ultimates 2 by Mark Millar
Captain America sodomizes an obvious Superman stand-in with a tea-cup.

Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore
Drinking tea makes cartoonish lesbian criminals write bad poetry and fall in love with men.

Cerebus by Dave Sim
Real men don’t drink tea. Tea is filled with mind-control chemicals that make men slaves of the feminist/homosexual plot to take over the world.

Ultimate Spider-Man by Brian Michael Bendis
“What are you doing Peter?”
“Making a cup of tea.”
“Making…”
“A cup of tea.”
“A cup?”
“Of tea.”
In extreme close-up. For six issues…

Star Wars from Dark Horse
Remember the third character from the left in that busy crowd scene in episode three? He makes a cup of tea.

Green Lantern by Geoff Johns
The tea actually first appeared in an issue published thirty years ago, and if you didn’t read that issue you won’t understand its importance to this story.

All Star Sqaudron by Roy Thomas
The tea actually first appeared in an issue published sixty years ago, and if you didn’t read that issue you won’t understand this story at all, because it’s a direct sequel to the back-up story.

Desolation Jones by Warren Ellis
The tea is actually being drunk by a trio of Peruvian sex midgets who swear a lot.

Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez
The tea is actually being used to make fun of how pretentious goth kids are, but it only inspires them to drink more tea.

So, with tongue planted firmly in cheek, we begin:

100-Web-based comics. Access to a digital camera, a scanner or Photoshop doesn’t make you a comedic genius.

99-Boxes from Diamond that only have one small item in them.

98-Bad decompressed storytelling. Good decompressed storytelling is a thing of wonder and beauty, but we’re rapidly approaching the point where we may need to have writers pass some kind of test before they’re allowed to use the technique. “Because six issues fit so nicely into a trade paper-back” is not an acceptable reason to use the method.

97-Being asked by a customer whether or not a comic that’s really bad is any good or not. Which should I listen to: my inner critic or my inner merchant?

96-“If comics were only cheaper/printed on lousy paper more people would read them.” No, more people would read comics if more comics were any damn good. Price and paper quality don’t even enter into the equation. In fact the ugly truth of the matter is that the low price point of comics is what’s keeping them out of many venues.

95-Advertising a book with the promise of killing off a character. Because there’s no such thing as bad writers who have run out of ways to increase dramatic tension, just bad characters who aren’t interesting or popular enough to make people care about them.

94-“Kids don’t read comics.” Yes they do. They just don’t want to read the same comics that their grand-parents read.

93-While we’re on the subject, the vast majority of Golden Age comics. They just weren’t that good.

92-Marvel’s reprint policy. It’s feast or famine with them these days. Stuff we could really use doesn’t get reprinted, but stuff they want fans to think is a hot seller gets reprinted over and over again in dozens of different formats, regardless of whether or not there’s any actual demand for it. And saying that you’re going back to press because the book “sold out,” when you only print to order in the first place, is at best disingenuous.

91-Variant covers. They were a neat idea the first time. Now they’re just a way to prop up sales.

90-“Ameri”-manga.

89-The very idea of comic book “ages.”

88-The thought that I might have anything whatsoever in common with a member of HEAT.

87-The continuing attempts by comics publishers to duplicate the success of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.

86-Comics publishers that pretend that death in comics is permanent or significant.

85-That comics fans still fall for it every time a marginally popular character is killed.

84-“Batman is considered to be an urban legend.”

83-That English translations of Ralf Koenig comics are hard to come by.

82-That the most posistive portrayal of gay characters in comics is in Japanese books about androgynous little boys.

81-Skip week events.

80-That a serious take on Zorak was actually published outside of fan fiction.

79-Thirty years of lesbian innuendo and “lingerie=evil” in X-Men comics.

78-Being asked when late books are going to ship.

77-Being asked when cancelled books are going to ship.

76-“That” smell. You know the one I’m talking about.

75-Via Mike: When customers who only speak in a mumble get annoyed with you for not understanding what they’re saying.

74-Autobiographical comics. If I wanted to know more about the lives of neurotic people I’d spend more time with my relatives.

73-Customers who call every day asking if we have an item in stock, but never actually come in to buy it.

72-Customers who call in every day asking if we have an item in stock, and when they finally do come in after calling every day for several weeks, get pissed because we sold it to someone else.

71-Barry Blair’s disturbingly androgynous figure work.

70-“Rock of Ages didn’t make any sense.” Always from customers who never seem to have any problems differentiating which alternate timelines various X-Men characters come from.

69-“How much is this baseball card worth?”
We don’t deal in baseball cards.
“Oh, well how much is this baseball card worth then?”

68-Strangers in Paradise

67-People who think that “comic book store” means “free baby-sitting service.”

66-“Comics were better when I was a kid.” No, they weren’t. You just think they were because you were a kid, and as such, had lousy taste.

65-Having to explain to someone who brought their “really good” comics into the store to try to sell them to us why the condition of a book is important.

64-Having to try to explain why the condition of a book is important over the phone.

63-“Do you have any good ninja comics.” You may think I’m kidding, but honest-to-God, I was just asked this the other day.

62-People who come in looking for tattoo designs. Take it from the guy with ink; if you’re going to have an image permanently scarred into your flesh, you’re going to want it to be something you really want to look at every day for the rest of your life. Strolling around a comic book store in the hopes that you find an image that takes your fancy is a one-way ticket to tattoo remorse.

61-People who claim to be Sam Keith fans who say, once I show them his latest work, “But this doesn’t have Wolverine in it!”

60-Customers who buy supplies and “know what they need,” refusing to let me help them make sure that they’re getting exactly what they want to get and need to get, in light of our “no returns” policy on collector supplies…

59-…Because they invariably return the next day complaining that it’s somehow my fault that they bought magazine boards to use with current comic bags.

58-“But it must be out, I saw it on the internet.”

57-Hearing all these sentences on a daily basis.

56-“Off-brand” 70s horror magazines.

55-“The danger room is angry.”

54-The Sin City trailer. Yes, I realize I’m in the minority on this one.

53-That everyone has jumped on this “Superman is a prick” band-wagon, thus making it very difficult for me to make fun of old Superman comics without it looking like I’m jumping on too.

52-Comic books based on toys that outlive the toys they’re based on.

51-Comic books based on video-games.

50-Comics with zombies in them.

49-Thor, even if Garth Ennis is writing the book.

48-Iron Man, even if Warren Ellis is writing the book.

47-Complaints about changes to the ethnicity of comic book characters in film adaptations.

46-Complaints about changes in film adaptations of comics in general.

45-The casual homophobia and misogyny of comic book fans.

44-That Mike Sterling has successfully conned all those people who read his site into thinking that he’s a nice guy. None of you know just how big a jerk he really is. Oh, the stories I could tell.

43-That film-makers have this uncanny knack for making movies based on comics by Alan Moore, and yet not one of them has understood the source material at all.

42-“I’m an artist and I’m looking for reference material.” Because what this always means is “I’m looking for something that’s easy to trace.”

41-“How much is this going to be worth?”

40-Trying to convince people that, no, really, tech stocks are probably a better investment than comic books.

39-Trying to do this to people I’m positive have a garage full of pogs and Beanie Babies.

38-Parents who think nothing of spending $50 on a Yu-Gi-Oh card but balk at the idea of paying $2.25 for a Teen Titans Go comic.

37- The “art” of Alex Ross. Yes, stiffly posed, realistic paintings of people in funny costumes sure are a breathtaking and revolutionary development in art…if you lived in Northern Europe 600 years ago.

36-That there is a sizeable segment of the population that will go to see movies about super-heroes, buy super-hero action figures, play video games about super-heroes, wear clothes with pictures of super-heroes on them and get super-hero logos tattooed on their bodies…but won’t be caught dead reading a comic book.

35-That whenever a talented independent comics creator starts to achieve some success you can literally count the seconds until someone accuses them of being a sell-out.

34-Comic fans who really like Kitty Pryde. No, I mean they really like Kitty Pryde.

33-That Chaos Comics ever existed.

32-That Chaos Comics no longer exists.

31-The Black Racer. Proof that even Jack Kirby could have bad ideas from time to time.

30-That the deification of Jack Kirby has resulted in writers and artists trying to make the Black Racer work in a serious context.

29-When you come into the shop with your Hot Topic pants, “indie band of the moment” t-shirt, studded leather wrist-bands, emo glasses and self-consciously “punk” haircut to buy all the acceptably hip indie and art comics that just got reviewed in whatever pretentious scenester music magazine you read…and pay with a credit card. Oh, wait, I’m sorry. This entry should actually go on my “Signs You’re A Poser” list.

28-Hearing the phrase “It’s not as good as the Jim Lee version” in reference to Jim Aparo’s Batman.

27-Customers who feel the need to ask me questions that are asked on a comics cover, such as “Where is the Justice League?” I don’t know, why don’t you try reading the book!

26-Magazines about comics that have a price-guide in them. Especially if it’s a price-guide for CGC graded comics.

25-The overall state of comics “journalism.” So we’ve got Tom Spurgeon and the occasional piece over at IcV2 for good reporting…and about two dozen sites devoted to reprinting publisher press releases and soft-ball interviews with the creators of the comics talked about in those same press releases.

24-Artists still trying to draw like Jack Kirby.

23-That talented artists made the mistake of taking Ayn Rand seriously.

22-Artists who attempt to make super-hero costumes look “realistic” and “practical.” In other words, I don’t need to see all the seams, buttons and fasteners on the costumes.

21-Comic fans who insist on reading dense, multi-layered works as if they are only surface-level, straight forward superhero comics.

20-The mistaken belief that there is some kind of hierarchy of geekdom. That it is somehow acceptable for Star Wars fans to look down on Star Trek fans, for Trekkies to look down on D&D players, for D&D players to look down on comic fans, and for comic fans to look down on furries. Guess what? You’re all nerds. Deal with it.

19-That there are approximately one million different manga titles being published in English about scrappy young boys hoping to become the best fighter, ninja, samurai or card player around, and an equal number of titles about whiny and neurotic teenage girls who inexplicably have the coolest and most handsome boys in school fall in love with them. No wonder people complain about all manga books looking alike.

18-Via Mike Sterling: Fucking crazy comic book fans. Let me explain. The kind of fan who, as a former co-worker once put it, wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to look up and see the Hulk walking down the street.

17-Comic fans who read interviews with Grant Morrison and get upset with what he says, not realizing that he’s being facetious.

16-Comic books that only exist because Alex Ross wanted to paint the covers.

15-Comic creators who claim that they aren’t being racist just before they make a racist statement.

14-Comic creators who get bent out of shape by comic fans who refer to fictional characters by diminutive nick-names.

13-Comic creators who absolutely refuse to permit their work to grow and evolve, and so are continuing to put out the exact same kind of boring, tired and cliché-ridden work that they were churning out twenty years ago.

12-Ah, the hell with it. The John Byrne Forum.

11-Articles in the more sophisticated comic magazines that read as if they were written by an over-eager grad student with a “Dictionary of Pretentious and Obfuscatory Words” handy.

10- Customers who come into the shop with a list of about two hundred back issues they’re looking for, a list that will require at least two of us to go through several dozen boxes of back-issues, and possibly even a trip into the dread “back room of over-stock” to hunt down those comics…on Wednesday morning. Any other day of the week I’d be more than happy to help people track down that many back issues…but not on the day I’m trying to sort through twenty boxes from Diamond. Not on what is usually our busiest day of the week. And what kills me, what absolutely kills me, is that the only people who do this know that Wednesday is new comics day!

9-Comics creators and publishers who leak information on creators and titles to internet gossip columnists, then complain when leaked information about them and their titles appears in internet gossip columns.

8-Comics creators and publishers who dismiss all on-line conversations about comics as “fifteen fat losers who can’t get girl-friends talking to each other with different screen names.”

7-Comics creators and publishers who get upset by what those “fifteen fat losers” say about them. If you don’t think any comics discussion going on on-line is worth taking seriously, why are you taking it seriously?

6-That the vast majority of on-line comics discussion really doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously after all.

5-The gall of “columnists” for internet comics “news” sites complaining that people who write blogs are “unprofessional.” “People who live in glass houses” and all that.

4-This notion that seems to have gotten into some peoples heads that Alan Moore and Grant Morrison hate super-heroes. If you’ve read their work and come away with that impression, might I respectfully suggest that your reading comprehension isn’t as good as you think it is.

3-That the most visible public face of comics is a magazine that drunken frat boys on spring break find sophomoric.

2-When a reporter for the local free weekly (and boy do you get what you pay for in that paper) described the service in the store as “apathetic” in an article, when Mike and I know for damn certain that every time this person came into the store we went out of our way to help them because they were extremely over-sensitive to comics content.

1-People who are so unrelentingly negative that they don’t have anything better to do with their time than make lists of things that annoy them about comics.

I found this story reprinted in Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen and, well, frankly even I’m at a loss to explain some of this story. But I decided I must share it with the world, especially since the on-line community seems to be on a Jimmy Olsen kick lately.

I mean, I know the first thing that comes to mind when you have to go undercover is disguising yourself as a woman, but Jimmy just seems to be enjoying the attention he’s getting from those men a little too much.

Anyway, Jimmy has to disguise himself as a woman in order to find out where a notorious gangster, “Big” Monte McGraw, has hidden some jewels, and this gangster happens to own a club that’s auditioning dancing girls. Because gangsters always discuss where they hide their ill-gotten gains with chorus girls. Jimmy, er Julie, gets a role when it’s revealed that she’s the only girl who can catch a baseball…

(Actually, it’s not that the other girls can’t catch, it’s just that Jimmy has so much more experience with balls flying at his face…)

[Sorry, I couldn't resist that one...]

McGraw, naturally, becomes enamored with Julie, much to the annoyance of Julie’s room-mate, McGraw’s old girlfriend, Maisie. Who has a pet chimpanzee. I’m sure that won’t become a plot point later. Also, Maisie’s apartment must be really hot and stuffy because she always has a fan on. I’m sure that won’t be a plot point later either. And much wackiness ensues as they live together, including an extended sequence in which it turns out Jimmy ate dog food. But eventually McGraw takes Julie out on a real date, and tries to impress her in the classiest way possible: by whacking a guy.

Day-um! Jimmy is one cold mo-fo! I guess the lesson to be learned here is that murder is okay, so long as you only kill someone who would probably have been executed anyway.

(I guess they don’t have any “accessory after the fact” laws in Metropolis.)

Huh. Who could have guessed something like that would happen once the chimp was introduced into the story?

Anyway, Julie/Jimmy overplays her hand when she begs off rehearsals because she’s sick, so that she can secretly search the apartment for the missing jewels. Monte, when he hears that Julie is sick, rushes to her side in order to propose. That’s a whirl-wind romance, that is. Once there he discovers Julie ransacking the apartment and, well, realizes something very important…

Really? He just now notices it? Then why is he so nonchalant about suspecting that the hair was fake? Did he think he was dating a bald girl? In any case, the problem is solved when Maisie’s chimp clocks him one with the baseball bat. I guess the baseball themed cabaret was important to the plot too. Superman then conveniently shows up after all the danger is past to reveal that the missing gems were stuck to the blades of the fan that was conspicuously drawn into almost every panel showing the apartment. I guess the “off” switch on the fan was just too complicated for Jimmy to operate.

“I’m, uh, I’m only still wearing the dress because it’s so darn comfortable…”

This issue of Howard The Duck was written by Christopher Steger and drawn by Val Mayerik, and was released to coincide with what was going to be the successful film adaptation of the Howard comics. This sequence takes place over the last three pages of the book, after Howard has won a fortune in the lottery and lost it in an attempt to create the “perfect” wife.

So, the character picking up Howard while he’s hitch-hiking is listening to show-tunes over the radio, uses effeminate language like “cheerio” and “duckcakes” and bears a vague resemblance to Walt Disney. I’m sure the stories about the Disney company forcing Marvel to redraw Howard so that he didn’t resemble Donald Duck had nothing to do with this slanderous caricature. Oh, and he’s traveling to San Francisco, and we all know what kind of perverts live there, don’t we?

Oh, and look, he’s got a limp wrist as well. How terribly original.

What the? “Fruit?” “Sally?” Not only is the caricature tired and cliched, but Howard’s insults are as well. Oh, and he’s listening to Judy Garland? Like we hadn’t figured out yet that the character was meant to be gay, I suppose.

I’m going to be the bigger man and assume that the reference to Merv Griffin didn’t have anything to do with those rumors.

Amyl nitrate? Marvel published a comic in which Walt Disney offers Howard the Duck poppers whilst propositioning him for sex? How the hell did this get past Marvel’s legal department? And calling a gay man “nancy” is about as unoriginal an insult as ever there was. I mean, “somdomite” is about as old and stupid an insult as “nancy.”

I mean, at least in that Hulk magazine I talked about a while back there’s a potential reading of how Bruce Banner really wants to have sex with another man, but this is just three pages of Howard spewing homophobic epithets. And it’s not even funny. It’s too sad and stupid to really be offensive for that matter. It’s pathetic.

I really fail to see the appeal of the vampire in horror fiction and films. It’s a ridiculous, over-used, and ultimately dumb concept that just never gets used well. Instead, we’re treated to a lot of silly tragi-romantic figures designed to appeal to people who think that no, really, Anne Rice is a good writer.

Let’s start with the basics here, and look at the vampire figure in Eastern European myth. It’s a bloated corpse, it’s mouth flecked with blood, that spreads corruption and death throughout the community. It’s a breakdown of the natural order, the stubborn refusal of the unwanted to leave people alone. It’s not a pleasant thing. It’s a disease metaphor, in fact. We’ll get back to that later, but come on! What the heck is so romantic and tragic about a blood-bloated corpse.

Clearly, the vampire was in need of some serious renovation in order to make it a figure palatable to the masses. Luckily, Bram Stoker and his Victorian-era sexual fetishes came along and provided just the right refurbishments. Gone is the dead, fat peasant, and along comes the elegant nobleman. And he’s not here to infect everyone with disease, no, he’s just looking for love. Love that requires him to sneak into women’s rooms at night and take them by force. What a bold and terrific improvement! Let’s take a symbol of corruption and disease and turn it into a symbol for rape and sexual violence! Brilliant! And just for good measure, let’s make it damn clear that the women being violated by the handsome stranger derive pleasure from it. Sheesh…

And so the vampire as “man women want to rape them” theme played out for a good long while…until Interview With A Vampire came out. I suspect that, on some level, Anne Rice may have been both aware and uncomfortable with the sexual violence aspect of vampire stories. So, she turned the tables. Instead of a vampire preying on young women because they secretly desire it, she has the vampire prey on young men because they secretly desire it. Now, homoeroticism had already been introduced into the vampire myth, several times. Dracula’s Daughter, Carmilla and Vampyros Lesbos are proof enough of that. Of course, lesbian chic and titillation of the male audience was more the point of those works than any a serious attempt to again reinvent the vampire myth. I sort of have to admire those works for being so shameless in their pandering. No, what Rice did was to attempt to remake the vampire as a symbol of homosexuality while retaining the elements of sexual violence and disease. Just in time, I might add, for a real disease to mark out gay men in the public’s eyes as sexual predators and carriers of disease. Way to go Anne!

Now given all that, you’d think the figure could be opened up to some further deconstruction. Nope, generally people seem fairly content with this figure. I walk into book-stores, and I check out the horror section, in the vain hope that something of merit like House of Leaves has been published, but what I find instead is shelf-upon-shelf of turgid novels all written by women who wear too much black eye-liner about tragic effeminate noblemen who prey on innocents, spouting angst-filled monologues at every opportunity, living a life of decadence until they find that special woman (always named Mary Sue, oddly enough) who can bring some light and life into their endless undead night. I’d find reading a transcript of the goth kids down the street weekly “World of Darkness” gaming session more compelling.

So, what are we left with the vampire…a disease metaphor, a Victorian metaphor for rape, and a very strange woman’s twisted take on gay relationships. And people eat this stuff up! They can’t get enough of it! Vampire books, vampire movies, hell, even vampire cereal! Eat a big bowl of your Eastern European inability to understand the process of decomposition, kids!

And don’t get me started on zombies…I can’t stand those either. Every zombie film and comic is essentially the same…a band of plucky survivors band together to fight the odds until human nature causes them to pick each other off one by one. And the zombies themselves…come on, yes, we all get that Romero used them as a metaphor for mindless consumerism and the dehumanizing effects of 20th century American culture. SAY SOMETHING NEW! (Shaun of the Dead gets a pass on this critique because it’s not technically a zombie film, it’s a romantic comedy with zombies in it.)

Part 1: Why I Hate Super-Hero Comics

Part 2: Why I Hate Indy Comics

Part 3: Why I Hate Manga

Manga is variously going to save or destroy the Western comics industry, depending on who you ask. People who like manga are convinced that if only they could get all those JSA and X-Men fans to read Tramps Like Us or City Hunter than they will fall in love with manga and Western comics publishing will start looking more like manga publishing and all the comic book stores and publishers will be saved! Hooray! People who dislike manga, on the other hand, are resentful of the fact that all these kids are reading Fake instead of Spider-Man or The Avengers like they “should” be.

Both sides are, of course, wrong. Manga’s audience isn’t anything like the Western comics audience and the rise and potential fall of manga has nothing whatsoever to do with the well-deserved (potential) death of the contemporary comics industry. (To borrow a phrase from Mike, since he seems in no hurry to use it, the comics industry we have today is the last, pathetic gasp of a fad that began seventy years ago.) We need to stop pretending that manga and western comics have anything to do with one another, other than occasionally brushing up against one another on book-store shelves.

Which is not, of course, to say that the manga readers don’t have their faults. They can be just as tiresome as the super-hero fans and the indie scenesters in their own way. In fact, manga fans seem to largely embody some of the worst negative traits of both the super-hero reader and the art-comix crowd.

To start with, there is often quite a deal of pretension amongst manga fans. I’m not talking about manga fans looking down on those “sad, adolescent” people who haven’t evolved past the point of reading super-hero comics, as they go to have their purchase of the latest volume of DragonBall Z rung up, although that element certainly exists amongst manga fans. No, what I’m thinking of most specifically are the people who pretend sophistication because of their deep knowledge and respect of manga, which is the most perfect artistic and literary form ever devised. It’s a peculiar form of Japanaphilia, less creepy than the anglo-American men who obsess over J-Pop singers, but annoying nonetheless. It’s the people who complained incessantly about manga not being presented in the “authentic” format when most publishers were still flipping and touching up artwork to present it in a left-to-right format. The fact that English is read left-to-right and presenting manga in that format might make it easier for people to read it was irrelevant. Now that most manga is presented in the original right-to-left format, their major concern is that the translations aren’t sufficiently “faithful.” “By changing the ‘san’ suffix to ‘Mr.’ they’ve completely changed the author’s intent!” they cry, weeping into their first edition copies of Manga! Manga!.

This is, of course, when they’re not too busy trying to impress you with the fact that they know a particular titles name in the original language, or it’s “cute” fans only name. I’ve lost track of the number of times people have asked me for Furuba or Aa, Megami-sama instead of just asking me for the title that I might actually be able to find it under.

To flip to the other end of the scale, one aspect of manga readership that doesn’t get mentioned very often is that many manga fans are actually very limited in their tastes. Despite the staggeringly large diversity of genres that exists in manga, and despite what a lot of manga-boosters would have you believe, most American readers stick very close to one genre. Their narrowness of taste will often put those of the most fanatical super-hero fetishist to shame. But unlike the spandex fetishist, many manga readers will insist that their purchases somehow actually do display an interest in a wide variety of genres and styles. The person who only buys X-Men comics in which Gambit appears at least has some basic honesty in their posistion; they don’t try to pretend that they’re more open-minded than they’re purchasing habits would indicate. But many manga fans will argue that there are actually significant and important distinctions between titles like Chobits and Love Hina and Oh My Goddess and Ai Yori Aoshi and Negima and Urusei Yatsura and Real Bout High School and they’re not just buying titles that feature under-age Japanese school girls topless and/or in panties, dammit!

Now, it is perhaps unfair to blame manga for the short-sightedness of it’s detractors, but there are a couple of comments from the anti-manga peanut gallery that manga publishers have sort of brought upon themselves. First is the notion that manga is a fad. People making this complaint really haven’t been looking up from their DC and Marvel comics long enough to realize what’s been going on in the comics industry for the last twenty years, and now that they have they look around them and see all these (gasp)women! and (shock!) children buying these strange-looking black-and-white paperbacks instead of reverently placing the most recent issue of Jim Lee’s Superman into an acid-free bag-and-board as all comics readers should be. For them, dismissing manga as a “fad” comforts them, and makes them forget that they’re the graphic entertainment version of a dodo–getting eaten into extinction by Dutch sailors because they’re too stupid to learn how to adapt to changing circumstances. Never mind that this “fad” began a good twenty or so years ago when Eclipse tentatively released some translations of Japanese comics into direct market stores to see if anyone would bite. No, what we’re really seeing is more of a “bandwagon.” Tokyopop decided to bite the bullet and throw a bunch of manga out in book-form to see if anyone would care…and they wisely decided to hell with the direct market and pushed to get the books into bookstores where the target audience for the kinds of material they were publishing would see it. And it worked. Very well. So every other manga publisher decided to follow suit. And it worked. Very well. And so other publisher have seen that it works very well to put book-form stories in book-stores and want a piece of that pie for themselves. To someone who was so engrossed in whether or not Peter Parker was a clone or the unflinching virgin purity of Gwen Stacy, all of these manga books suddenly appearing in Previews and where the Kingdom Come and other nostalgia-wanks used to be at Borders, it must look remarkably like, oh, say, the black-and-white comics boom, or the chromium comics boom, or the bad-girl comics boom, or the Crossgen comics boom (oh, wait, that one never actually happened). So, to a certain extent, manga publishers could have done more to differentiate their success from the other bubble-economies that the direct market has gone though over the years. On the other hand, screw the direct market and what it thinks seems to be a business strategy that’s worked well for manga.

The other potentially valid, they’ve-brought-this-on-themselves, issue that manga publishers face and I unfairly blame them for, is the issue of the manga glut. Yes, there are a hell of a lot of manga titles coming out each month now. I think Tokyopop alone accounts for about three or four inches of previews each month. But at this point, manga publishers are still seeing what the market will bear. Not the direct market, Dear God no, but the book-store market, which is several orders-of-magnitude larger than the direct market and therefore potentially more able to handle a wide variety of back-stock and new releases. No, the real issue with the two million or so different manga titles that come out each month is that the overwhelming majority of them are absolutely terrible. Badly drawn, derivative, cliched, and the only reason I give the writing a pass is that all I have to go on are the English translations, which are generally artless in the extreme. It’s not too much manga we have to fear, it’s the tidal wave of crap swamping the worthy titles. As it gets harder and harder for readers to find the wheat amongst the chaff, we run the risk of manga readers losing interest, or worse yet, losing critical discernment. And again, manga publishers and their “throw everything out there and see what sells” approach is largely to blame. Well, no, Tokyopop is largely to blame, to be honest. With most of the other manga publishers I can be reasonably certain that even if something is not to my taste, it still has some merit to someone. With Tokyopop we’re lucky if one of the 4,000 titles they release each month is worth reading.

So Bruce Banner is staying in the YMCA and decides to take a shower. As he enters he is eyed by two…well, to be honest, I’m not quite sure what they’re supposed to be. Are they meant to be gay? Are they meant to be members of a street gang? Are they meant to be members of a gay street gang?

Ah…see, they are meant to be gay. With all of the subtle writing we’ve learned to expect from Jim Shooter, not only do they have vaguely fruity names like “Dewey” and “Luellen,” but they’re clearly interested in Bruce for his body. I’m going to give Shooter the benefit of the doubt here and presume he didn’t intend to imply any racial subtext by having the African-American gentlemen make the comments about “pearly white” skin…

Apparently this pair makes a habit out of this, hence the “cutie from Akron” line. Wow, so they’re not just rapists, they’re promiscuous rapists…as all gay men are, don’t you know. And with Bruce on his knees and Dewey reaching for his pants, it seems pretty clear that Bruce is about to face a fate worse than death…

Funny, then, that he never changes into the Hulk. According to the text, Bruce doesn’t change because apparently he’s “more afraid” of turning into the Hulk than of doing something that will disqualify him from Military service. I, unsurprisingly, prefer the deconstructive reading. That is, the text is saying something the author didn’t necessarily consciously intend. Which is, of course, that part of Bruce actually wants this to happen to him. I also prefer this reading because, let’s face it, how naive are you to have been living in New York in the late 70s/early 80s and not realize that the YMCA is one of those places where men go to have sex with other men. There’s even a song about it, for pity’s sake.

Luckily for the teenage boys and arrested adolescents who make up the Hulk’s readership, Bruce doesn’t have to make with the oral pleasuring, as he convinces Dewey that he’s actually…the Hulk, and that he’ll change into the Hulk and kill him if he tries to do anything to him. And he then runs away…naked. And, just in case we still weren’t clear, Shooter has Dewey lisp…as all gay men do, don’t you know.

Finally, we get something that only adds to the deconstructive reading. Bruce finally does change, but only because of the “horror” and “revulsion” he feels. At himself, perhaps? Anger at his possible secret desire triggering the change to the Hulk? As if to drive the point home, the sequence seems to draw tremendous attention to the Hulk’s ass.

So, in the farewell post at Grotesque Anatomy, John Jakala signled out this comic as one of his favorite comics as a kid:

And it’s easy to see why. Despite the overwhelming adequateness of most of Bob Haney’s stories, this one just goes that little bit extra bit over the top to turn it into a thing of beauty.

First of all, we open with Batman and Commisoner Gordon debating what to do about an imprisioned henchman of the Joker’s, Mike Dubcek, who refuses to talk:

Next, we move onto Wildcat, who is preparing to participate in an exhibition boxing match at the very prison, hires a washed-up ex-boxer to be his bucketman. In fact, Dubcek is the prisoner the warden has selected to fight Ted Grant, on the basis that Dubcek once almost beat him in a title bout and “we might have a riot on our hands” if they don’t let him out. The fight goes as you’d expect:

But what of this curious incident just before the fight?

Shortly afterwards (we know it’s “shortly” because we’re conveniently told that by the text) every inmate comes down with a “rare tropical fever”…medical authorities are baffled until:

Yes, that washed up boxer Ted Grant hired was actually a stooge for the Joker! And that water-bucket? Infected with a “rare tropical fever.” And all of this would have been avoided if the Warden had just, oh, I don’t know, actually kept the guy he was supposed to keep in solitary in solitary…Luckily, there’s a scientist investigating the disease who has a dog “whose blood’s crammed with enough antibodies to inject all the prisoners”:

I’ll leave the feasability of the medical aspects of this over to Scott at Polite Dissent…what can’t be disputed is this: Isn’t it cool to see Batman saying something as completely out of character as “we dig?”

Somehow, of course, the Joker has found out all about this little dog with the cure for the “rare tropical fever” in his blood, and sets out to kidnap the dog so that Dubcek won’t be able to inform on him…killing everyone in a prison seems to be a pretty far length to go to off one guy, but this is the Joker we’re talking about here.

Of course, we wouldn’t have a story if the Joker’s plan worked, and so:

What ensues is a wild chase through the city, with Batman, Wildcat on his Cat-O-Cycle (I’m not making that up, that’s what it’s actually called) and the Joker looking desperately for Spot. And doing a real good job of it too:

Spot, meanwhile, makes friends with a garbage scow dog, a little boy and a homeless man before succumbing to the inevitable…leaping into the dog catcher’s van…

Luckily, Batman thought to check the pound, only to discover that the dog’s owner came to claim him already. A “weird lookin’ bozo…had green hair”…which means that there’s someone out there in the DC Universe who’s been living under a rock for twenty years and has never heard of the Joker…who then, coincidentally, calls Batman on his “secret police frequency” (and how secret is it if your archnemesis knows it?) and tells him of a way he can get the dog back:

The Joker knows Wildcat’s secret identity? Anyway, knowing that if they don’t fight for real, the Joker will kill the dog and doom all those rapists, murderers and thieves to a death by “rare tropical fever”, Batman and Wildcat give it their all. Of course, since we can’t definitvely establish whether Bruce or Ted is the better fighter, this is the result we get:

A double kayo! Joker takes the opportunity to tell Bats and Cats that they heavy metal gloves they were wearing were also both infected with the “rare tropical fever” and so now they’re doomed as well…only:

Joker rushes to stop one of hench-man from drowning Spot, only to remember that he can’t swim. Luckily for everyone, even a dog can escape from one of the Joker’s death-traps and so:

And everything works out in the end:

(Except for Spot, who will probably be dissected…)

Let’s face it folks, the problem isn’t that there aren’t any comics for kids, or that kids aren’t interested in comics. The problem is the parents. They control the purse-strings, they’re the ones who have veto power over purchases. They’re the ones you need to convince to buy the comic, not the kid. And by now we’ve all heard the usual advice on how to get the parents into the store, i.e. keep it clean, well-lit, organized and for God’s sake take the Witchblade and Lady Death and Betty and Veronica posters off the walls. But that’s not enough. So I present my probably-won’t-usually-fail-sometimes tips and tactics for convincing parents to buy comics.

1)The Trade Paperback is Your Friend

It’s all about perceived value. Parents will frequently balk at paying $3 for a flimsy paper artifact that’s going to fall apart as soon as the kid starts reading it, so steer them towards the big thick books with spines and real binding. People will pay more if they think they’re getting good value for their money. There are two things I must caution you about, however. Don’t call them “graphic novels” because no one seems to know that the word “graphic” is just a fancy way of saying “picture.” They always seem to think it means “nasty sex and violence.” Also, don’t call them “collected editions” because nobody seems to be aware that the words “collected” and “collectable” mean two different things.

2)Don’t Argue With Them About the Price of Comics

This is related to the first point. You’re going to hear a lot of statements along the line of “Comics sure are more expensive than why I was a kid” or “They’re charging $2.25 for this! They used to be a quarter!” None of these people are economists and they have never heard of inflation. In the world they live in, nothing has gone up in cost over the last 30 years except for comic books. Gas still costs less than a dollar a gallon and for $10,000 you can buy a house in Southern California and still have enough money left over for a new car.

3)Be Prepared to Answer a Lot of Dumb Questions

Specifically, the kinds of questions anyone with the slightest amount of commen sense would be able to answer for themselves if they thought for more than two seconds before opening their mouths. Questions like “Why is this book in black-and-white, is there something wrong with it?” or “Why are all the Japanese comic books printed backwards, did they misprint it?” or “Why are Superman and Batman gay in this comic?” Just smile pleasently and give a short answer that explains that the book in question is supposed to be that way. This ties in to points four and five:

4)They Think They Know More About Comics Than You

“Ah yes, this is what they call a ‘cyber-punk’ comic. That means it has a lot of violence in it” was indeed once said to me by a parent looking at the cover of a recent Superman comic. I did not correct him, because as far as most parents are concerned, they are the experts. Not the person who actually works in the comic book store. I’ve a theory that some hormonal change occurs in people once they have kids that makes them believe themselves to be the fonts of all human knowledge, but I haven’t cut up enough brains to test it yet. The best solution to deal with it is, again, to smile pleasently and perhaps right down some of the more entertaining bon mots to post later on you web-site.

5)They Think They’re Better Than You

Partly, this is because you’re on the other end of the consumer-retailer continuum, and Americans have been wrongly conditioned to believe that as consumers they can do no wrong and are always in the right. Partly, it’s because you work in a comic book store and are therefore pathetic and despicable and probably a sick pervert child molester to boot who gets off on cutting up Barbie dolls (which I was actually accused of doing by one customer when I told her we didn’t buy Beanie Babies). Never mind that they’re the ones giving you money for a trashy little comic book their kid is just going to tear up. Never mind that you actually have a college degree and only took this job to save money while you decided which grad school you wanted to apply to, while they got their girlfriend pregnant two months before graduation and had to give up that community college football scholarship and take the assistant manager job at their dad’s Jiffy-Lube in order to support the new wife and kid.

6)Avoid the Back Issues

This incorates elements of all the earlier points. Unless they were given a list of actual back issues their kid needs, don’t let them buy back issues. First of all, they won’t be able to figure out where any of the back issues are or how they’re organized. It won’t occur to them to look for Aquaman where all the title beginning with “A” are located and which you put a big sign up in front of that says “A” on it. Secondly, they won’t know why the book that only has a slight corner crease on it is more expensive than the book with a spine-roll, subscription crease, extensive chipping a quarter of the back cover torn off. And if you try to explain that to them you will only get a blank stare in return and perhaps a comment along the lines of “But they’re the same comic.” Similarly, do not attempt to explain that age, condition and demand will determine a book’s value, not the price printed on the cover. They will not understand that just because the book originally sold for 60 cents, that doesn’t mean they can buy it for just 60 cents now.

Again, Trade Paperbacks Are Your Friend.

7)You’re Going to Be Mistaken For A Baby-Sitter

A bit of a tough-love approach is sometimes called for here. You need to be firm and remind parents that, yes, you’re a comic-book store, but the key word there is store. If they wouldn’t change their kids diapers on the jewelry counter at Macy’s, why would they think it’s appropriate to do so at the counter at the comic book store? If they wouldn’t drop their kids off for two hours in the home of a total stranger, why would they drop their kids off at a comic-book store and tell the annoyed looking man behind the counter “I’ll be back to pick them up in a couple of hours, they’re not allowed to buy anything, can you send them out to meet me at 4?”

8)No Matter What It Is, Someone’s Going To Be Offended By It

Parents either think that either all comics are intended for children, or no comics are intended for children. It’s something peculiar to comics that doesn’t seem to translate to other mediums. Sure, some of the hysterical, reactionary parents out there might like to live in a world in which the only music, movies, books, games and television shows produced were suitable for children, with all the depth and moral and emotional complexity of an episode of Blue’s Clues, but most people rightly ignore folks like that. But even the folks who sneer at the people who want to censor music or movies will be shocked, positively shocked and appaled at the fact that some comic books are…slightly more serious in tone or content than an issue of Archie. So, always be prepared to provide an alternate selection. If Ditko/Lee Spider-Man reprints are too boldy sexual for a parent, try Marvel Age Spider-Man. If Superman is too violent and political, try Superman Adventures. If Bone isn’t sufficiently wholesome and innocent for their precious little angel, try post-issue 200 Cerebus.

9)No, Seriously, You’re Going To Be Asked a LOT of Dumb Questions

You’re just going to have to learn that people don’t know any better. They don’t know that Previews doesn’t actually contain comics. Why they insist on buying it after you show them that it doesn’t actually contain comics and is just a rather silly catalog for fetishists is a mystery for the ages, especially when they come back the next day and want to return it because “there aren’t any comics inside and you told me there were.”