Had some time to slowly starve, emaciate and kill while I was downtown t'other day and lo! A comic book shop raises its hoary head. Now, I have my pull-list set up at the LCS in my own hood, so it wasn't like I could just buy everything up and be set for the week's end. No, I could not do that to the store that has been very good to me, the store that helped me acquire the entire Fables run. But I could sink some money into various properties I don't have on my pull list. Like a pair of number 1s released this week from Image.
Suburban Glamour #1 was all like fancy and shit. and full of bright colors and I thought it looked pretty and wanted it and coveted it and it was shiny and it made me think in run-on sentences. The cover alone was a nifty pink and black number with an appropriately fashionable punk-ish young lady enveloped in what appears to be a fine mixture of pixie dust and bizarre hybrid beasties which look like a cross between the men's room symbol and those creepy-ass bears radiohead sometimes uses on their website.
Plot wise there was a lot of angst. A lot of boredom. Seriously, when i was a young man, I wasn't half as bored throughout the entirety of my teens as much as some fictional young men and women appear to be in many contemporary sitcoms, novels, blogs, and hundreds of comic books. In fact, if i had some down time... I'd have spent it reading fucking comic books! Not sitting on a couch with other androgynous dark clothes'd whiny ass bitches. Oh, the slings and arrows of youth! Not old enough to be trusted with any responsibilities but old enough to have all the desires of an adult. blah blah blah. You know how you circumvent that kind of crushing ennui? Do a ton of blow and have a few abortions. Or just grow a pair, wait it out, play a few hours of Halo and get a job.
Sword #1 has a lot more going for it and I'm not just talking about the Luna Brothers. It had some real menace, some real character development (aside-- now that i think about it, SG wasn't so bad after all, just my rejection of the themes... story wise, construction wise, it was strong, almost elegant... one more reason it pisses me off) and some villains that would make you wet your pants. You know, the kind that dispense needless violence and appear to like it. I don't want to discuss the plot very much, suffice it to say a hero is born, er, armed (and re-legged).
I have very mixed feelings about the art work tho. The lines are crisp, it certainly has its own style, but the flat colors make things very Chris Ware-ian, sorta Dan Clowes-ian, and just the connotation of those guys gets a man feeling kinda low. Yet the writing more than makes up for this, and I am looking forward to the next chapter.
Closing out Sinister Monday is this head-scratchingly ridiculous piece of dumbfuckery by the House of Ideas. Okay, here's the deal. You have this mini-series comprising the back pages most of your X-titles. It is supposed to be the lead in to your mega-crossover Messiah Complex. You call it "Endangered Species" and it kinda sucks. How do you ice this kind of crap-cake? Well I'll tell you.
Last week, X-factor #24 contained the 15th chapter of Dr McCoy's uninteresting quest, made all the more uninteresting by the vaguely Heroes-ish but still mega-fucking cool conclusion of Peter David's "isolationist" story thread in the main pages of X-factor. Anyhow, the final page of Endangered Species chapter 15 instructs the reader to check back for the next installment in New X-men #43. Only one problem-- New X-men isn't slated to ship until Halloween. You know what is scheduled to ship one week earlier? X-men #204 with the final chapter 17.
Obviously the Marvel brain-trust will correct this, most likely with pushing back X-men #204, but in either case, way to fucking go. If this has any effect on delaying "Messiah Complex" I'm'a gonna start seeing Scott Summers style red. you know, assuming he's not asphyxiated and floating out in deep space.
Okay, vitriol.... expended. see ya next week.
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