Nowhere / No Formats

This morning as the sun was rising I finished reading Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories, the big hardcover of all of Gilbert Hernandez’s old Palomar stuff from the first series of Love and Rockets. It’s an intense read, but honestly, if you’re the sort of person who reads comic book blogs, I would hope you already know that. I don’t really know how to summarize what happens in the book, other than: “Somewhere south of the Mexican border, generations of people live and die, in glorious español unless otherwise noted.” Of the Hernandezes, I still think Jaime is the better artist–his strongest gift is his ability to effect nuanced, emotive facial expressions with so few lines that it looks effortless–but Palomar, if nothing else, cements Gilbert as the better storyteller. People always make big deals about the magical-realist elements of the series, but I barely noticed them. Compared to the patient lyricism of Beto’s characters, the truly fantastic stuff is small–the spice rather than the meat.

Palomar hits its peaks-among-peaks with the stories that delve into single characters’ perspectives on things: Holidays in the Sun with hardening jailbird Jesus Angel, Bullnecks and Bracelets with glamorously suffering Israel, For the Love of Carmen with awkwardly intellectual, sad-eyed Heraclio… The landscape of Palomar isn’t defined by the simple, almost blandly featureless homes, but by the intersections of the residents’ perceptions of one another. I won’t be so stupid as to describe the characters in Palomar as “real people”–of course not, they’re drawings and words–but the judicious selection of moments, thoughts, and dispositions is effective trompe l’oeil.

In the more spread-out stories like Human Diastrophism, Beto reveals himself as a master of true comic-art montage. We ride his scenes like waves until they break–shattering into quick flashes, managing to weave together multiple climaxes into something that leaves you disoriented, but never confused. It’s been a long time since I’ve torn through a comic this ravenously, and longer still since I could immediately consider it a masterpiece, elbowing its way into my personal canon.

What I’m getting at: if I say everything sucks this week, it’s because I spoiled myself rotten beforehand.

Amazing Spider-Man #684

Marvel Comics. Written by Dan Slott. Penciled by Humberto Ramos. Inked by Victor Olazaba. Colored by Edgar Delgado.

Speaking from my position in the untouchable caste–that is, long-time fans of Spider-Man–I’m not sure how I feel about the current blockbuster mega-arc, Ends of the Earth. In the last installment, Doctor Octopus and the Sinister Six took the entire world hostage, defeated the heavy hitters of the Avengers in a matter of pages, and effortlessly sabotaged Spider-Man’s new, supposedly everything-proof Spider-Armor. In this issue, the two non-captured Avengers–Spider-Man and Black Widow–hook up with semi-obscure European mercenary Silver Sable, and fight the Sandman in the course of trying to block Ock’s plans to something something something.

The last Doctor Octopus vs. the World situation I can remember was around the release of Spider-Man 2, which featured Ock. To tie in, Paul Jenkins and Humberto Ramos did an arc of Spectacular Spider-Man. The arc–Countdown–continued the ongoing trend of Jenkins’ Spider-Man tenure, which was taking classic villains and humanizing them to an understandable, if not always sympathetic, degree. It was there–and in Zeb Wells and Kaare Andrews’ excllent Spider-Man/Doctor Octopus: Year One–that we learned about Doctor Octopus’s troubled childhood, which pushed him away from humanity and sanity and into the eight arms of science. The stakes of Countdown were potentially global, as Doc Ock kidnapped a Palestinian politician who was spearheading a peace accord, and directly personal: the price for the politician’s freedom was the unmasking of Spider-Man, his most hated and insurmountable foe. (By this point, Ock had already conquered death, after being offered up as cannon fodder to Clone Saga villain Kaine–a.k.a. the current Scarlet Spider. Spider-Man continuity isn’t usually as convoluted as the X-Men’s, but sometimes…)

The reason I bring up Countdown is that it puts into a sharper relief what’s missing from Ends of the Earth. Both stories exploit the Global Stakes/Personal Stakes dialogue–disrupting the Middle East peace process vs. frying the ozone layer, frustration with an enemy vs. facing the inevitability of death–but in execution, they’re inverses of one another. While Countdown‘s Ock Caper was certainly dangerous and in need of stopping, the real focus was on his emotional state and his adversarial relationship with Spider-Man. Here, people’s emotional motivations are a matter of course, treated like necessary set dressings in order to get to the real business of the story, which is all the high-tech one-upsmanship. Thus far, it’s a story of Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus going to increasingly absurd lengths to outsmart one another, with everything else a middling concern at best. It’s like if Sleuth forgot about the wife.

The saving grace is Humberto Ramos, for whom a character like the Sandman is an early Christmas gift. His antic, infinitely pliable bodies and his penchant for pop-eyed over-emoting are perfect for Spider-Man–note that he was on Countdown, too, nearly ten years ago. Outside of the Sandman scenes, though, I can’t really think of what to say. I wouldn’t want to read Ramos on a 24 comic, illustrating the tense, sweaty phone calls between Jack Bauer and the chick who hucked the baby on Mr. Show–and it’s not much of a step up for him to be drawing people talking into headsets and commlinks, and having the big triumphant moment come from thrusting iPhones at the villain until he confuses himself into a coma. If the story had the sort of emotional oomph that he could mine frantic body language from–like Spider-Island last year–it’d be different. But it’s not. Instead, we have a comic where Spider-Man is so wrapped up in some science-nerd rivalry that he doesn’t even think twice about effectively ripping someone’s living brain out of their body. I’m not sitting here, steaming like some hydra-headed editorial staff has perpetrated some horrific crime against imaginary real person Peter Parker, but I am left sitting here wondering where they missed the trick.

Avengers vs. X-Men #2

Marvel Comics. Plotted by Jason Aaron, Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, Jonathan Hickman, and Matt Fraction. Scripted by Jason Aaron. Penciled by John Romita Jr. Inked by Scott Hanna. Colored by Laura Martin.

It comes back to this idea of comic books being written by committee, and whether or not that’s a good thing–or even a viable thing. It’s important to consider that previous comittee-driven comics that worked–as opposed to ones that didn’t work, such as Fear Itself–did so under specific storytelling circumstances. A quick list of things I thought “worked” (maybe not spectacularly in all cases, but they worked): Defiant and Broadway Comics, Brand New Day-era Amazing Spider-Man, the mini-series that rolled out in preparation for DC’s Infinite Crisis series…

In those three examples, what’s important is that the gathered heads put themselves together and came up with a big picture that could then be rolled out in separate but consistent pieces across an entire product line. Jim Shooter, JayJay Jackson, and others maintained a tight hold on Defiant/Broadway continuity by planning out the arcs and interrelationships of their various titles and then group-writing issues of each book–to that end, each part of the committee could both function as a peer-checker of the other members’ work, and a memory that might keep in mind certain interests or emphases that the others could forget. The significant trip-reset and architectural work necessary for Infinite Crisis was no doubt decided by committee and then parceled out to individual series. Each series could then be assigned to creators that fit the specific intent of each series, and they could do their own thing while achieving a piece of necessary Infinite Crisis set-up. Amazing Spider-Man, in its Brand New Day phase (#544-#647 or so), had writers’ conventions that would map out a year or so of storytelling, and then break it down further into arcs that played on each writer’s strengths, while chaining them all to the same necessary minimum of forward momentum regarding various subplots.

When it doesn’t work, it’s like eating a soup that has chunks of whatever people thought tasted good floating in it, with no regard for whether or not they taste good together. The modern crossover model, pioneered by Marvel–a core “essential” mini-series, that fans out into innumerable tie-ins that, in theory, support and expand upon it–malfunctions in a different way, where you get a taster’s plate by one chef, and then a shove in the direction of the buffet line and its cacophony of hot plate lids. So even if you liked the way one of those initial morsels tasted, the full-size portion of it is being prepared by someone else entirely, and it could just totally turn you off. A successful committee exercise is more like your choice of three courses, all consistently prepared by the same chef, even if the exact menu was decided above his head. You don’t want a pastry chef tasked with finding a way to incorporate hot chili and stir fry.

Alternately, a bad committee exercise is something like the song “We Will Rob You,” on Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II. Raekwon and GZA do the first and second verses, narrating tightly-focused crime-story narratives, and then Masta Killa arrives for the third and final verse and just burps out a list of all his Wu-Tang bros and some Nation of Islam stuff. Slick Rick is featured, but only sing-songs the chorus and a couple ad-libs besides, which is as cruel a bait and switch as anyone ever pulled. (Less cruel, but still blatant: Game’s “Martians vs. Goblins,” which credits Lil Wayne as a feature but just has Wayne wheezing “Bitch I’m a marsh” in what sounds like a sample from voice-mail message.)

And so we return to comics, and Avengers vs. X-Men. Well, on page one I hurled the comic away in a rage when Storm said “God help us” instead of “Goddess” like she always does. After I took a while to cool off, I stapled together the burnt remnants of the issue and read the rest of it.

As it turns out, I liked this a lot more than both #0 and #1. JRJR draws the fuck out of it–that will never be in dispute. Dig Cyclops’ dented visor after Cap clocks him with the shield. It’s a perfect little touch. Storywise, I don’t even think it’s entirely down to the change of scripters between #1 and #2–Aaron’s dialogue certainly wastes less space, but there’s less space in this one to waste, period. Hell breaks loose on page two, and continues throughout. The immediate comparison that jumps to mind is something like G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #50, by Larry Hama and Rod Whigam. That book took time to pay off old subplots and introduce new ones in between the all-out (but curiously gore-free) carnage of the G.I. Joe team invading Springfield, an entire town that functioned as a front for the terrorist organization Cobra. Replace “the G.I. Joe team” with “the Avengers,” “terrorist organization Cobra” with “X-Men,” and “subplots” with “for more on Namor vs. Ben Grimm, see AvX: Vs. #1″ (although the comic actually offers no such indicator)–you get the idea.

Is this a success or a failure of the committee-written model, though? At this point, it could really go either way–the batting average is low, but it’s not .000 yet. What it really represents to me is a blown opportunity, because a huge event like this could have been one giant multiple orgasm. Set up the plots, build them, and then resolve, resolve, resolve until the crowd’s screamed itself hoarse. Make it WrestleMania, or at the very least Starrcade. I’m sure that things will get resolved here, but so much of it feels vague and inelegant. The Cyclops/Wolverine schism, sure. The Hope Problem, definitely. Beyond that, uh…

Well, you know, the Thing and Namor have fought a whole bunch of times over Susie, right?

It’s a collection of little details and tiny moments, but what does “This is exactly why we have a marriage counselor!” or “microscopic telepathic tasers” offer other than that? If AvX Vs. is, as they say, “comic book porn,” then so far, this is Zalman King scoring a cinematographer above his pay grade.

Avengers vs. X-Men #2: Marvel AR App Content

Marvel Comics. Same creators as above.

I don’t even know what to say here. Full disclosure: I’ve worked in publishing. Specifically, I’ve worked in textbook publishing, where the name of the game is to constantly provide new and essential forms of value for your consumers–value that requires a constant stream of income from new customers/students, because otherwise if all you do is sell them some fucking book they’re just going to buy it used on-campus and suddenly you’re not seeing a dime off that content anymore. What this entails is usually web interactivity of some kind: study help, test prep, essay feedback from trained monkeys with Master’s degrees, and ebooks. The ebooks in particular can get particularly sophisticated, incorporating built-in media supplements to expand upon the points of the text, and direct students to offsite material provided by the publisher.

By contrast, Marvel AR is kind of a joke.

The sum total of Marvel AR content in Avengers vs. X-Men #2–a flagship Marvel title that was supposed to help usher in Marvel AR–is a motion-comic recap on the cover (narrated by what sounds like a 15-year-old sarcastically pretending to do a dramatic reading), a trading-card biography of Quicksilver on one page, and pencils-to-inks-to-color animated process videos on two panels. That’s all. The point this gets across to the consumers: “we either don’t know what we’re doing or we don’t have the time to give a shit, or to hire someone who does.” The blown opportunities are endless.

I mentioned this last issue, but christ, look at that recap page. It’s something like 40 headshots of characters with no explanation. “Loa?” I’m Joe Somebody who hasn’t read Academy X or New X-Men or Namor: The First Mutant, so who the fuck is Loa?

What if Marvel AR could tell my tablet/iPhone/cyborg-parts to offer me a link to a specially-built web page full of capsule biographies? What if, when Storm and Black Panther have their marital spat, I could use Marvel AR to see a brief explanation of their status quo? Likewise Tony Stark and Emma Frost. “Hi, I haven’t read X-Men in a couple years, why does Wolverine hate Cyclops (moreso) now?” Shit like “See the now-classic X-Men: Schism miniseries! -Splittin’-Hairs Stan” is way out of vogue, but if nothing else, the Marvel AR app is a new way of doing footnotes.

I’m not even looking at this entirely from a “make the medicine go down easier for new fish” perspective, either–if a customer has the money for an iPhone or a Galaxy Tab or a whatever-the-fuck, they probably have the money for a TPB of Generation Hope or whatever you want to refer the kids toward. Will some people cry foul and go “Marvel, stop trying to sell me things”–? Of course, but you know what, right now, right here, fuck them, because the alternative is something like this half-assed crap–this issue doesn’t even include an awkward voicemail message from Bendis.

I’m not even getting into how the images still display like pixelated dog shit on my tablet. Get the big stuff right first, Marvel, for fuck’s sake. I don’t even know why I’m getting worked up. By the time anyone even tangentially connected to Marvel reads this it’ll be 2025 and we’ll all have Comixology implants in our taints or whatever anyway.

Captain America and Bucky #625-628

Marvel Comics. Plotted by James Asmus and Ed Brubaker. Scripted by James Asmus. Illustrated by Francesco Francavilla.

These didn’t come out this week, but my store was having a sale. By now, I’m pretty sure Captain America and Bucky has totally transmogrified into Captain America and… where you can finish the title with whatever hero is hanging around that month. That’s the final evolution of the confused existence of this book, which started off as Ed Brubaker and Marc Andreyko doing a four-issue retelling of Bucky’s origin with Chris Samnee, followed by a single-issue story that, once and for all, gave us the Untold Secret Origin of Black Widow and Winter Soldier’s affair. Afterward, we got this: a four-issue arc that brought in James Asmus as co-plotter and scripter, Francesco Francavilla as artist, and ditched the flashback idea for a story firmly set in modern times. It also features “Bucky” in the sense of Fred Davis, the second guy to play the role–at the behest of the U.S. government, because the original Bucky supposedly died in a plane explosion.

The actual content of these things appears to be repurposed surplus parts from old issues of JSA. Davis-Bucky narrates with fawning lines like: “Bill Naslund and I were just two regular joes. That is, until we were given the greatest honor I could ever imagine–we got to fight alongside the most amazing men of a new era–and carry on the legacy of our nation’s greatest heroes.” Francavilla’s art likewise seems to harken back to a different set of comics, but they go further back than Asmus’s script. Looking at his art, the posed figures and moody but unfussy linework call to mind the artists of the 40s–Bill Everett, Bernard Baily–filtered through the sensibilities of a modern digital illustrator like Larenn McCubbin. Unfortunately, he doesn’t exactly hinder the JSA-style nostalgia drone. His coloring is heavy on orangey-red and yellow light, making the characters look like they’re in a world where the sun is forever setting but never actually going down.

The whole premise–”you don’t know who William Naslund is, let alone Adam-II, but here, let us assure you over and over that they’re a big deal while a modern menace repurposes their concepts in a way more palatable to modern adult superhero readers”–is the opposite of how Brubaker operated on his own salvaged villains in Captain America. We didn’t need some steady patter of monologue narration to remind us that Sin is a fucked-up crazy menace. Sin just went around being a fucked-up crazy menace, and we could infer the rest from her sadomasochistic interactions with Crossbones. It’s OK for a story to hold my hand sometimes, but I object to it gingerly placing my fingers around the base of its cock. It’s the last great frontier of adult-comic-reader dissatisfaction: forced nostalgia. “You care because of all this stuff you don’t even know about, so let’s hit you with a double-barrel of between-the-scenes flashbacks and melodramatic hero-worship captions, all with the subtlety of shooting a gun into the air.” It ruins too many good stories, straight up.

Hellblazer #290

DC Comics/Vertigo. Written by Peter Milligan. Layouts by Giuseppe Camuncoli. Finished illustrations by Sal Cipriano. Colored by Brian Buccellato.

It’s not enough for Hellblazer to be the best book DC publishes, hands-down. It also has to have on lockdown the two best artists for drawing people looking fucking crazy–Simon Bisley when he’s got the time, and Giuseppe Camuncoli and Sal Cipriano for the rest. Since Cammo drifted off to work as a penciler for Amazing Spider-Man, he’s only contributed layouts–which has been Cipriani’s cue to make everyone look even crazier. The lines have gotten harsher, the thick shadows of the cheekbones have gotten sharper, and the overall looseness of it–as much as work this grounded in real things like trenchcoats and bookshelves can be “loose”–gives it a Kubrick-stare vibe, like you could see a coked-up Jack Nicholson playing any/all of the characters in the film adaptation. It’s all in the whites of the eyes and the teeth and it hints at the kind of inner depravity and ferocity that Hellblazer doesn’t let spill out onto the page these days, except in hints and rumors. It can’t be coincidence that Constantine’s eyes are scratched out on the cover. They’re the window to the book’s existential terror.

The current Hellblazer storyline–Another Season in Hell–is all about the shambles that is John Constantine’s family. Constantine himself has only just escaped from Hell, where he was seeking to liberate the damned soul of his sister. Meanwhile, his wife Epiphany has brokered a deal with Lucifer, lord of Hell, to restore her father to life after she inadvertently killed him–because he’d beaten the shit out of Constantine’s fucked-up niece Gemma, who had been sleeping with Piffy’s father to anger Constantine. Do you follow?

For years, the trick of John Constantine has been his self-prided bastardry, mixed with his equally deep self-loathing–he’s too much of a fucking shit to make connections with people, and he rationalizes it by saying that they’re better off without his bad juju anyway. Granted: they are, but is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Hell, is it just a case of the damage being done? Is it too late to fix your ability to hold someone close after a life of neglectfully and mean-spiritedly pushing everyone away? That’s the sort of thing Peter Milligan is on with his Hellblazer run, and it’s a valid, even sometimes poignant emotional impulse felt by everyone except for sociopaths and teenagers in KMFDM shirts (there’s overlap). Everything turns to shit as you get old. Is it because you’re getting old, or is it karmic payback for once being young?

Meanwhile, in Justice League Dark, they throw rocks at vampires or something. That’s Milligan for you.

Judge Anderson: The Psi-Files Volume 02

Rebellion/2000 AD. Written by Alan Grant and John Wagner. Illustrated by Arthur Ranson, Ian Gibson, Romero, David Roach, Siku, Kevin Walker, Mark Wilkinson, Steve Sampson, Tony Luke, Charles Gillespie, and Xusasus.

Douglas Wolk ran this one down pretty damn well over at his ongoing Dreddblog project, Dredd Reckoning. So I’ll just do something quick for you guys to return to when you get back here after you lose a couple hours over there. (You should, too.)

The first Anderson Psi-Files book was, it must be said, not exactly what legends are made of. Judge Cassandra Anderson–gifted psychic in the employ of Mega-City One, the fascist cyberpunk remnants of the post-apocalyptic eastern seaboard–was meant to be a counterpoint to uber-thug and 2000 AD torchbearer Joe Dredd. Where Dredd was dour and tightassed, Anderson was wry and tight-assed, a glam blonde Debbie-Meets-Dirty Harry who could make with wisecracks and actually, on occasion, feel feelings. That’s all well and good, but because Anderson was so defined by her opposition–that is, her characteristics came through mostly as a list of things Dredd wasn’t. The first volume stuck Not-Dredd into a bunch of Mega-City crime adventures, and the harsh truth stood revealed: the things that made Anderson different from Dredd made her the same as all those generic action heroes who Dredd was meant to be different from in the first place.

Volume 02–which flubs chronology a bit mostly to put the color-printed stories together–is where Anderson became her own character. In 1988, John Wagner and Alan Grant–longtime writing partners and architects of Dredd’s world–split over creative differences. In the divorce, Wagner took Dredd for the most part, and Grant took Anderson. As the story goes, at the end of the Dredd epic “Oz,” Grant wanted to have Dredd kill the character Chopper, and Wagner wanted to keep him around in case they wanted to use him later. This is noteworthy because in the wake of the split, Wagner’s Dredd became even more blatantly brutal and fascistic, and Grant’s Anderson became a kind of psychic cosmic punk travelogue.

The peak of the book comes early–Shamballa, with Arthur Ranson, whose work as an illustrator of celebrities for TV and music mags made him perhaps the most adept and creative lightboxer in all of comics. After that, there are hills and valleys, but throughout, there’s a determination to explore new territory that just couldn’t fit in with the adventures of a Judge chasing crooks in the Big Meg. No other Dreddverse stories were ever quite so… well, cosmically aware.

Prophet #24

Image Comics. Written by Brandon Graham and Farel Dalrymple. Illustrated by Farel Dalrymple. Colored by Joseph Bergin III.

By now, it’s not too much of a drag to realize that Prophet uses a list of equipment and weapons in place of a coherent personality for its hero. He himself is of a piece with his gear–he’s a walking weapon, a tool in the most literal sense, being used by higher purposes. That’s pretty much exactly what happens in this issue. A Prophet–for there are many John Prophets, of the Earth Empire, dateline unknown–awakens and is guided through the halls of a degenerating, mind-destroying starship until he reaches his mysterious goal. Farel Dalrymple gives us a different world for a different Prophet; the last arc featured Simon Roy’s soft ridges and brown light, and this world is thinner, stiffer, and colder.

That’s the thrill of Prophet. With a lead whose characterization can be summarized in grunts and stab wounds, our focus has to spread outward, and it becomes a comic that’s about the thrill of exploration, as much as anything else. Prophet is a blank slate we can project ourselves into, a kind of quietly masculine alter-ego: instead of being garish and blatant like, say, Wolverine in his blue and yellow, this take on Prophet is competent and unyielding, keying into the simple human desire to be strong enough to never quit in despair. Prophet pushes through unfamiliar worlds on sheer force of will, and we bounce after him, enjoying the fruits of his thankless labor, getting to marvel like cultural tourists getting off to his bleeding wounds and vomit.

Before, I likened Prophet to a video game–Fallout, specifically–but now I’m not sure that’s accurate. Video games are built around the principle of you do this task, then that task, then a third task, and eventually after you’ve jumped through enough hoops, you’re at an ending, or at least a set-up for a sequel. I get the feeling Prophet could keep exploring forever, mining the infinite vein of humanity’s ability to mobilize into the places that don’t even fucking want it.

Thunderbolts #173

Marvel Comics. Written by Jeff Parker. Illustrated by Declan Shalvey. Colored by Frank Martin Jr.

It’s been 15 years and original T-Bolts artist Mark Bagley–present here on cover duty–hasn’t forgotten what we like out of our villains-pretending-to-be-heroes. Check Zemo on that cover, wry Eurodickhead grin patently obvious behind his mask, palm firmly planted on Meteorite’s metal-coated ass while her future self, Moonstone, grinds that same rear against Zemo’s thigh. He’s even thrusting his pistol into the air, like the exact reverse of that notorious Steranko Nick Fury panel. The stiff barrel pointing straight up–putting it in a holster would have confused the imagery.

Does this have anything to do with the story inside? Well, not really. The old Thunderbolts meet the new Thunderbolts and party together, because scum game still recognize scum game. Declan Shalvey draws one of his best issues yet–things feel off-the-cuff but self-confident, like he’s learned to trust the intuition of his lines. His acting and emoting seems to get better with every issue I see.

The twist at the end, too, man–this comic is like old Ostrander Suicide Squad in the best possible way, where it’ll let you get used to having characters around, warm you up to them, maybe let you fool around a bit, and then it’ll lean in close and grin and you can sort of make out blood caked up in the gums and smell meat on their teeth and that warm voice is right up in your ear saying “by the way baby we’re crazy and we don’t give a fuuuck” and you can’t help but feel your thighs twitch because it’s hitting something innate that maybe you don’t want to admit you’re into, and you catch yourself laying awake at night, wondering when’s the next time Parker’s gonna write a scene where Songbird gets her toes sucked.

Wonder Woman #8

DC Comics. Written by Brian Azzarello. Illustrated by Cliff Chiang. Colored by Matthew Wilson.

Bullets and bracelets and you could almost swear she’s winking at you–Cliff Chiang’s Wonder Woman gives even less of a fuck than the Thunderbolts, but in a more noble, selfless style. She marches into Hell in thigh-baring armor as if daring the lost souls to try and let their dead eyes roll up toward her bikini zone. “Go on, try some shit,” she says, even when she’s smiling with a jaw that’s slender but’ll still break knuckles. “Hades?” she says, for real this time. “You stole someone I love.” The key to that bluntness is the last word–she’s a warrior who’s not afraid of her emotions, which–as Josh Bayer taught us–are the ultimate battlefield.

But you know what? I’ve sat around all day reading comics about villages in Central America, spacemen with cancer stabbing each other, two superhero varsity teams bashing each other’s brains in, bargains with Satan, time travel, flying off into space to feed your head like the fucking end of Repo Man…

…and the end of Wonder Woman #8 was still the last bit that made me go “damn, that’s fucked up.” I love it.

This Weekend: I’ll be at the Boston Comic Con, so if you see a guy with platinum blonde hair and a red mustache that straddles the line between “Castro District men’s room” and “obvious pedophile,” say hey or something.