The Marginally Engaging Adventures of the Superfisters
Before we get to this week's comic books, we must first point out that Issue 2 of Kevin McShane's Toupydoops has, as the kids say, hit the stands. (We reviewed Issue 1 a few weeks ago.) This latest installment sees our heros standing in line to get into a club where, it turns out, everybody sucks. Poseurs and floozies and five dollar beers deflate their enthusiasm for Los Angeles, but just when all seems lost and parking tickets are chomping at their heels, Toupydoops makes a neato new friend who somehow seems to make everything seem okay. Good times. And we're still looking forward to the day that Teeter snuggles in with the other bears at Oil Can Harry's.
(While we were visiting our friends at Isotope Comics, we also picked up Issue 5 of the awesome Polly and the Pirates -- God, we can't get enough of swashbuckling youngsters.)
New this week: War-Fix, by David Axe and Steve Olexa. David's a war correspondent who's spent time in Iraq, and his comic is about, hey, a war correspondent who's spending time in Iraq. His friends and family don't want him to go; he's scared of dying; the other journalists confirm that he's crazy to be there. So why does he go? Why does he stay? It's something he can't explain. Reporting on someone else's war is like a drug for him, and for the other newsmakers; they see folks shot and buildings blown up and somehow they just can't look away. So they chase it from one hotspot to the next. War-Fix is a smart, scary war zone travelogue, but it also feels like something else -- a confession.
The Last Christmas by Gerry Duggan, Brian Posehn, Rick Remender, and Hilary Barta is about Santa and his elves at the North Pole. But it could just as easily be about a beloved police sergeant and his rookies in Brooklyn; or a preacher and his flock in the Bible Belt; or a Yakuza boss and his henchmen or a silverback and some baboons or a feudal lord and his serfs. It's a paint-by-numbers revenge story -- with a TWIST! ... That actually isn't much of a twist at all. Post-apocalyptic Earth; North Pole ravaged by marauders; Santa plunged into depression; elves buoy his spirits and he vows revenge. Ho hum. Image Comics sure is obedient when it comes to genres.
And then there's Hotel California, a slapstick Korean manga about life in a California prison by a person calling themselves "JTK." The art's mediocre and the story's meandering; it feels like some kid's rushed-through school project. The book (which is long; nearly 150 pages) is divided up into chapters, which more or less separate one serious of misadventures from another. Misadventures in which NOTHING HAPPENS. The characters are painted with such broad, one-joke strokes, and the comedy falls so very very flat that it's hard to keep paying attention. Fortunately, there's a creepy racial undertone involving two hip-hop-obsessed inmates that may keep this train wreck just weird enough to stick with.