Hurray! Matthew “The Oatmeal” Inman is back with another fantastic and funny pet-themed comic book, If My Dogs Were a Pair of Middle-Aged Men. The observations aren’t at all original and any dog owners will be familiar with them: freaking out when you leave, losing their shit when someone knocks on the door, playing with squeaky toys, and eating like slobs, to name a few.
I consider myself a liberal, in that I have more liberal views than conservative, though I do have both; I’m non-partisan and slightly left of centre. But, fucking hell, I’m ashamed of liberals these days, who I’d previously considered more enlightened than conservatives, when I look at some liberals’ behaviour. Antifa (anti-fascists) who hypocritically behave like fascists; so-called progressives who, completely lacking self-awareness, take regressive positions, refuse to listen to opposing views and readily employ aggression to silence dissent; Black Lives Matter who, in attempting to draw more attention to racism, have only made race relations worse and whose many members describe white people in the most horrendous terms - again, hypocritically, being as racist, if not more so, than the people they protest!
A superhero comic called Captain Canuck, like a Canadian version of Captain America? Maybe an indie superhero comic would be better than what the mainstream offers and you could play with national stereotypes. This could be fun, right? WRONG! Oh Canada… So this is the relaunch of an allegedly “classic” ‘70s character but, if you’ve never heard of the character up ‘til now like me, there’s a reason for that - unlike maple syrup and Tim Hortons, Captain Canuck suuuuucks!
Old Man Logan works fine as a standalone book but as an ongoing title? Nope. And I think at this point Marvel should just stop because Jeff Lemire’s clearly run out of ideas. So the unmemorable story of Logan hunting down Lady Deathstrike takes him back to, of course, Japan where he has to fight some arbitrary warrior monks because what else is he gonna do?
Antonius Axia, Rome’s first (and only) detective, is back with a new case: temple statues of the gods are coming to life and killing young nobles and a popular female gladiator is somehow connected. Can he solve the case before Emperor Nero loses patience and feeds him and his son to the lions?
The Unbelievable Gwenpool has nothing to do with Gwen Stacy or Deadpool; she is Gwen Poole, a Marvel fangirl from our world who has inexplicably wound up in the Marvel Universe! Using her unique inside knowledge of Marvel comics, Gwen has survived the strange and dangerous superhero landscape by deposing the giant testicle with a face, MODOK, and becoming the new head of his criminal organisation. She also has a team-up with Ultimate Spider-Man himself, Miles Morales!
I like to move it, move it, move it, I like to… movie it, provie it, shooo… sorry, I think my brain’s broken from too many crappy comics lately! Oh up yours Young Animal. Thank Jeebus this is the last one of these I’ve gotta endure!
With his best friend Foggy Nelson dead (or is he…?), Matt Murdock breaks out of prison to pursue the killer - a trail that will take Daredevil on a tour of Europe to the puppet master behind it all. The second half of Ed Brubaker’s first Daredevil arc, The Devil, Inside and Out, isn’t bad. It’s well-written with Brubaker showing he understands the characters and nails their voices and it’s beautifully illustrated by Michael Lark - it just didn’t do much for me.
Iris is a veteran of the Second Gulf War and spends his days selling ‘shine to his backwoods clientele and being a mediocre husband and father. But he’s haunted by his time in the Iraqi desert and what he and his platoon did - and the demons from that time are coming home to roost… I didn’t really know what to expect with The Dark & The Bloody and unfortunately it turns out that it’s a pretty crappy Southern Gothic horror, similar to Wytches and Harrow County. Neither the characters nor the story are in the least bit compelling with the whole thing tediously unfolding slowly. This person is killed off followed by another and… zzz… It took me a while to wade through because I just didn’t care! I suppose it’s an imaginative take on the shit America got up to in the Middle East - it’s an original premise, I’ll give it that - and the monster is visually interesting, but I found The Dark & The Bloody to be a bloody unengaging, bland horror.
I think Chuck Dixon might be the worst Batman writer of all time. If he’s not, he’s definitely in the running. Bruce Wayne discovers that he’s related to one of the Grail Knights (of course he is) and is given the actual Holy Grail by one of his descendants. Ra’s Al-Ghul and some other rogues want it - boring shenanigans ensue. Tedium would be an upgrade for what I felt when reading The Chalice. No idea why John Van Fleet’s art is so very black (because I’m Batman!) but I was squinting most of the time at the page right in front of me in daylight - not great. Predictable, uninteresting, uninspired, and absolutely pointless, it’s easy to see why this toilet paper masquerading as a comic is out of print. Let’s hear it for Chuck Dixon everybody! BOOOOO!!!
I think most people are familiar with Pepe the Frog at this point. He figured heavily in the 2016 Election as a meme and his grinning mug has become a symbol of the amorphously-defined “alt-right”. Matt Furie’s stoner comic Boy’s Club is where he originated and I picked it up out of curiosity for what the comics this character featured in were like. That was definitely one of the worst decisions I’ve made in some time - Boy’s Club is 10000% utter dogshit.
I’ve just emerged from the longest dry spell of reading any quality books I’d rate four stars or above in years - it’s been over a MONTH! So thank goodness that a new Giant Days arc drops just when I think I’ve got anhedonia. Seven - SEVEN! - books in and this title is still first class all the way. HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS, YOU MAD GENIUS JOHN ALLISON!!!?! Seriously, no other comics series I’ve read has been this consistently good.
Kingpin may have been nicked but he’s got an ace up his sleeve. If the FBI Director cuts him loose, he’ll give him The Murdock Papers, irrefutable proof that the blind lawyer of Hell’s Kitchen, Matt Murdock, is The Man Without Fear himself, Daredevil!
Penny gets fired from her job and booted out of her flat all in the span of a day. Ooooh, I gets it, the title’s irooooonnnnicccc! So she moves into a storage unit and goes to work at a laundromat run by her friend’s kid brother for comedy reasons. But romance is around the corner in the form of nerdy Walter - could Penny... get Lucky, (ohohoho, nudge nudge)?!
