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DC can't get a single fucking thing right. It's either the art that's a total horror, or the writing stinks, or it's fucking both. And I've tried to be excited about this relaunch, God knows I've tried, but WHY have they invited the same useless people back to stink up the place? That panel with Green Arrow shooting up some cadavers? Yeah, that's the future of DC Comics right there. Everyone involved should be let go post haste, and Mark Chiarello should be allowed to run the whole show, as opposed to (as I currently imagine) being confined to a tiny office in the virtually derelict east wing of the building, behind a door which has a filing cabinet wedged against it, so he can't get out and cause any trouble with his "ideas".

I'm reaching a point where I can't even finish reading a DC book. That Secret Seven thing, with Peter Milligan and George Perez? That should've been amazing, right? And the Jeff Lemire Frankenstein thing - that's a no-brainer. Jeff Lemire does Hellboy, with Grant Morrison's Monster - unimpeachable. And yet, and yet... I wanted to throw the things in the trash when I was done with them. There was such a fundamental disconnect between the story and the art in both cases (in SS, due to an idealogical mismatch, in Frankenstein due to rank incompetence), that reading them was an actual chore.

Dear DC - you need new editors, fucking STAT.

I only read the bit about Green Arrow shooting cadavers...

If I donate my body to science, I can only hope my dead body is used for such lofty endeavors.

Do people think that the appearance of a Muslim hero is going to make Superman readable?

I guess its better to be depicted as boring as everyone else rather than not at all.

Am I supposed to be able to read that Lois spread (um, bad word choice, but I'm claiming my delete key is broken) to see how they've fucked it up, or is it just the art? Which is more than enough "example," yeah.

And the Green Arrow: So amazingly crap, and for no purpose. When Geoff Johns writes crap, it's in an attempt to "blow your mind" (rainbow lanterns that puke blood and/or want lots of stuff!) or to deal with his own sexual neuroses (Hal Jordan is the best, and he gets laid! A LOT!). So there's a reason. THIS, though, is just ... an attempt to get the worst possible idea into the smallest possible space? Is that what the GA series is, like a clown car packed with stupid?

This meme's far too well-established to ever quash it now, but I think the fact of the matter is that Arsenal was supposed to be staring at the dead cat in horror rather than actually planning to hit anyone with it. It was still a really, really shitty comic, though.

As BrianMc says, that Lois panel is unreadably small, which I think ruins the punchline?

Also: If you lived in a world where people grew weird freakish piles of muscles on their backs, yet had extraordinarily tiny hands like that guy in that Burger King commercial about the Whopper, you might want to brush up on your anatomy too. That's what I'm assuming the rest of the comic is about: Green Arrow wondering if arrows still can harm people in this grotesque new world, or if the muscle plague has rendered everyone impervious, forcing him to resort to boxing glove arrows. Because frankly, he was just looking for an excuse to bust out the boxing glove arrows.

So... I don't think I've actually read a DC comic since. I dunno. 1995. So obviously I've missed some things. But, is that Green Arrow panel legit? This is not some kind of sociological experiment on your part? Because it's just appalling on so many levels, I can scarcely believe it's real. Just...wow.

It's the real thing Sean.

I was waiting for someone who wasn't in the midst of a soul-crushing move across the country to jump on the whole cadaver thing. I'm glad to see someone was able to pick up the baton there.

That scene from GREEN ARROW combines Liefeldian hideousness, in the egregious incorectness of the anatomy, with millennial Didio/Johns sophomoric shock tactics in such a specific way... a deliberate and calculated way... it'd be hard to believe they're not BAITING you into featuring it in Comics Of The Weak! I'm onto their game. And who could blame them? It'd be fun just to publish this kind of thing to see what that prick Tucker will say next. If I were a DC editor, I would lob you some underhand slow-pitch just for the sake of amusement... since nobody's reading these comics, who cares anyway?

My idea: Judd Winick, Kenneth Rocafort, and a team of no less than 18 different inkers combine efforts on a new TITANS storyarc where Whatever Girl gets weaponized breast implants to impress That Kid Who Looks Like Flash but they're posessed by the wandering spirit of an old Silver Age bad guy who uses voodoo to control the bodies of heroes. The cover says, in gooey green font: "ONE OF THESE HEROES WILL BE SODOMIZED!! CAN YOU GUESS WHO??" and at the end, Doiby Dickles will be sacrificed on a blood altar and I'll go on CNN and talk about how topical and important to the nation it is and the comic will be bagged in black vinyl because there's a very special funeral scene where heroes cry a lot and you FEEL Firestorm's pain... YOU FEEL IT.

Your move.

Also... now I'm picturing a comic book world where each hero's origin story consists of training on cadavers they took from a medical facility. I mean, back in the day, they used dummies or punching bags for that kind of shit but that's not nearly hardcore enough. I want a new version of Batman's Year One where he learns about the effects of ballistics on human organs by loading up some hearts and brains and livers into one of those skeet-shooting traps that launches them into the air where he blasts them with a double-barreled shotgun. And what are these valiant heroes fighting to preserve? Human life, of course.

"As BrianMc says, that Lois panel is unreadably small, which I think ruins the punchline?"

1) That many words on the page = info dump. Info dumps suck; aren't *stories*.

2) There's no clear pathway for the eye to follow with the caption boxes-- I can pick out 3 different ways to "read" that page.

3) The storytelling in that flashback is nonsensical-- there's a flashback container structure but the last panel in it is "Now"; there's no POV on the second panel in the flashback; the establishing shot goes second and the third shot is not in the same scene as the establishing shot, etc.

4) Too many down-shots by an artist that can't really pull of down-shots. Also, not enough depth to those drawings-- way too flat.

5) Caption boxes with "now" in them are the hackiest things in comics. Hack move.

6) The drawings aren't very strong.

7) Does the audience for a Lois Lane comic want to read about Roman slave girls, instead of Lois Lane being awesome journalist lady?

8) Really- none of the compositions work. The camera on the hand holding a spear panel in particular is in the worst possible place-- what is that, ankle-level? Basic storytelling is just off. The writers don't help the artist out, mixing a flashback with, what, three establishing shots in 2 pages...? I've never read one of their comics, but they sure weren't "thinking comics" on these pages.

And so on.

Also, 9) That computer lettering in the bottom right, for the sound effect is beyond lame. I like computer lettering more for dialogue and captions, but computers can't do sound effects...

10) The artist is struggling to draw a tree...? I'm sure whoever's a very, very talented artist but maybe wasn't given enough time to execute at their best level here, would be my wild guess. That's what that looks like...

Those buildings in the last panel look like toothpaste containers. The composition above it-- Lois dead center, a woman getting cut-off to the right, no depth to any of it... The panel above that is video playing to a crowd of no one which... if video plays in a forest and no one sees it, is it still blah blah blah?

I have to hope the artist had something preventing them from doing their best, a tough deadline, a rough personal life, I don't know what...

11) Doing a flashback on a page means you get to do interesting things to convey that-- here, they opted to place it all in a giant yellow box... and then put a gradient in that box for... some reason.

The colorist is confusing gradients with good color throughout that page-- putting a gradient on the olive green selected for the exciting panel of Lois shoving a spear into some... thing's head isn't going to make that panel more exciting when you've selected olive green for the action panels...

I do like how the artist and the colorist worked together on Lois's hand though, on the panel all the way to the left. That's not a bad looking hand at least this far away. Well, I'm assuming that's Lois... I don't know-- for me, for Lois I always think Jennifer Jason Leigh in Hudsucker Proxy, not Demetrius and His Gladiators or whatever's going on here...

12) The murderous amazons who will kill all babies and are real serious threats to the DC Flashpoint Universe...? They like their walls to be hot pink because they're also ladies, and that's the kind of color that ladies like.

(I'm okay with Roman gldiator slaves having pink nail polish though-- Lois Lane should have her nails did in any comic she's in, she shouldn't be all torn up...)

Anyways, I'm going to stop now, but my point being you don't need to read the words to see why those pages don't work...

Okay, I just don't know how to explain the hold that panel has on me. Its ugliness, careless grotesque brutality, and casual implausibility have combined to create in me a feeling of nausea and strange compulsive researching.

DID YOU KNOW- This issue has been reviewed in a variety of places, mostly positively, and with a straight face every time?

DID YOU KNOW- The writer of said issue warrants a full-on interview at a major comics site? And they don't ask him where the corpses' limbs went?

DID YOU KNOW- Those cadavers must be...magnetic, or something, eh?

DID YOU KNOW- That panel seems to be calculated to make me feel nostalgic for those sweet, uncomplicated comics of my youth. Like, you know, Punisher War Journal. And X-Force.

Alright, I'll stop now.

It may be predictable to say "what abhay said", but so what, it's never been more fitting.

Sean: I found the armless cadaver follow-up to beat most armless cadaver follow-ups, so keep your eyes peeled for the next installment in Tucker Reads DC Comics And Finds Weird Off Putting Shit.

I've pretty much got the stereotypical nerd physique, but I'm positive that the average muscular back doesn't look like a topographical map of a desert badlands.

LOVED the last few issues of Captain America, its as strong as the stuff from the first 42 issues. I wrote it up and went on about the Butch Guice art and it is pretty much the best I've ever seen from him.


"Tucker Reads DC Comics And Finds Weird Off Putting Shit."

If you shorten this to "Tucker Reads DC Comics" it'll have precisely the same meaning.

This set of reviews, and, especially the comments section are hilarious. This all should be bronzed and preserved somewhere off the evil interwebs.

I would tap that Captain America, and if his hankie code is any indication, he would tap me too. ::thumbs up::

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