President Evil #1 — Writer/Artist: David Hutchison
Drafted: One Hundred Days #1 (of 1) — Writer: Mark Powers; Breakdowns: Chris Lie; Pencils: Junaidi and Faisal
Your Obama exploitation books of the week. President Evil is the better one, just because it’s so cheerful about its pop-culture, anything-for-a-buck whoredom (the Army of Darkness pose on the cover, the cranked-it-out-over-the-weekend art, and the puns that start with the title, move on through “Ba-Rot” Obama, the zombie-fighting President, and end with “Stephen Corvair” on the last page: I’d compare it to a Mad movie parody, but that would imply too much quality; let’s go with Cracked instead).
Drafted, on the other hand, tries to go the classy route (“We’re not whores; we’re — um, companions! Companions who get paid!”), by taking this ongoing sf series, about Earth getting into the middle of a fight between two alien races, and doing a special issue centering around an alternate-future Barack who never became President because of the invasion, but is still, you know, inspiring and noble and stuff. Unfortunately, there’s no point to it other than the exploitation, and for your $6 you get an utterly boring story; you start to pray for a “Sarah Praline,” or a zombie, or someone’s head getting ripped off, but no such luck: just 46 pages of dull, semi-professional exposition (the “100 Days” in the title apparently refers to how long it feels like it takes to read this thing…).
Amazing Spider-Man Annual #36 — Writer: Marc Guggenheim; Penciller: Pat Oliffe; Inkers: Oliffe with Lanning
Using the old-school Annual numbering on this book, instead of making it a one-shot or one of those Extra! issues, might have been a mistake, because it just reminds the reader that comics like this used to be events (the Sinister Six, Spidey and Dr. Strange, the story of Peter Parker’s parents, etc.) — and, if in later years the “event” part wasn’t so special, at least they were (usually) complete stories. Here? Not so much — it’s a $4 advertisement for the upcoming “Return of Ben Reilly” storyline, with the introduction of a cheesy new villain (who jumps the shark maybe five pages into his fight scene, when he inexplicably grows these huge, silly-looking fangs and tries to pull a Mike Tyson on Our Hero), relentlessly mediocre story and art, and no actual explanation or ending to the narrative: instead, we get a “continued in Amazing Spider-Man” blurb. Yeah, OK, the point of corporate superhero comics is to get us to buy more corporate superhero comics, but they could at least try to hide it a little better than this.
Punisher #72 — Writer: Victor Gischler; Artist: Goran Parlov
Getting better, as Gischler continues to go the Jason Aarons throw-in-every-movie-cliche-you’ve-got route, by putting Frank into the middle of a B-movie bayou version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Fun, but still not quite worth buying and keeping next to all those Ennis issues, although the Parlov art helps, and I liked the little guy who pops out of the car trunk towards the end.
From the Ashes #2 — Writer/Artist: Bob Fingerman
It’s clear from this second issue that Fingerman isn’t interested in telling an actual post-apocalyptic New York story here: he’s using it as a basis for social satire. Nothing wrong with that (Gulliver’s Travels doesn’t make any “sense” either), but his targets (Consumerism! Religious intolerance!) are too obvious, and, while his husband and wife protagonists are easy to like, there’s no narrative suspense — it’s clear that nothing bad will actually happen to these people. Cool art, though.
Dark X-Men #1 (of 3) — (Namor): Writer: Paul Cornell; Penciller: Leonard Kirk; Inker: Jay Leisten; (Mimic): Writer: James Asmus; Penciller: Jesse Delperdang; Inkers: Andy Lanning and Jesse Delperdang; (Dark Beast): Writer: Shane McCarthy; Art: Ibraim Robertson
This is one of those event tie-in books that’s just a series of vignettes, each focusing on one of the major players as they interact with Main Bad Guy Norman Osborne. The Namor one tries to explain what he’s doing with these idiots; the Mimic one is eleven pages of backstory infodump and Sad Mimic, and the Dark Beast one offers two pages of Osborne/Beast conversation and nine pages of padding. At $4, this is for completists only.
North 40 #1 — Writer: Aaron Williams; Art: Fiona Staples
A small, isolated Texas county gets taken over by Lovecraftian elder-god influences, and its residents try to cope. Better than it could have been — the art handles both the little human touches and the creepy horror stuff well (it reminded me of Ben Templesmith in a few panels), and if the characters are small-town cliches, we still end up caring enough about them to want to read more. Worth a look.
Phil Mateer
