Unpopular Opinions!

Valhallahan

Comic Books Are Nice

As unfashionable as it is to say on the Internet, actually like monthly comic books, I like the look and feel and the objects as a whole. I like paper. Also, as someone who works 9-5 in front of a PC screen, I don’t want to stare at a screen too much when I go home. I try to make a trip to a comic shop once a week, on a Friday or Saturday, I tend to go with friends, often with that guttersnipe Action Ash because it’s a nice jaunt and you can all go to the pub afterwards. Obviously digital would make it easier to have but less fun. Making them something you just download in private in your nerd cave takes away a fun social aspect of the hobby. Like it's something to be ashamed of, you probably say a Hail Mary and cry afterwards.

Phonogram and Scott Pilgrim Were Both Shit

You heard me, what chu gonna do about it? Phonogram was a pretentious, wanky Hellblazer rip off that should've stayed an idea in the back of some sixthformer's excersise book. Scott Pilgrim looked like shit and was 90% one arsehole whining. Maybe I just hate indie kids.

X-Men The Animated Series Was Not That Good.

I know it got a lot of people into X-Men, but really... I dare you to watch an episode now. X-Men: Evolution was better. Wolverine and the X-Men is better. Pryde Of the X-Men was better and that had an Australian Wolverine!

Deadpool Is Not Funny!

Not even slightly. The fun's over now let it go.

What Is Wrong With You People? (A voyage into the DC readership Part One)

Valhallahan

When DC announced that letters pages were returning to their books after a long absence, I was pleased to hear it. I enjoy anything that adds to reading time in my monthlies, even those annoying little Super 8 pull outs, I read The Walking Dead’s letter page every week and fondly remember the nerd raging fanboys in the X-Force/X-Statix issues, proving that sometimes there’s none so backwards as the fans of the fantastic. But what are today’s fan’s thinking what kind of person reads Jonah Hex? What are my fellow consumers thinking these days? How about the Vertigo readers, surely they’re my Kind of People right? Our survey says: “Hell Naw!”

Some people just don’t know when they’re on to a good thing. In this series I'll share some examples from three of my favourite books.

Scalped #48

In Scalped #48 Joe Fonseca of Kitchener, Ontario goes to great lengths to prove that not everyone in the land of Wolverine and Neil Young has the level of discerning taste we’d been led to believe. He writes:

“…Most Vertigo titles have Very good writing but poor art, Scalped is the exception…regarding the covers: I understand why Vertigo is going for a different look to their covers, but the fact of the matter is that the vertigo covers are not very appealing to the eye. The ironic thing is that of all the Vertigo books, I find Jock’s to be some of the more interesting ones (next to Bolland’s Jack of Fables covers).”

Couldn’t disagree with you more Joe, week after week the Vertigo covers pop out at you from the shelf, if anything, Bolland’s are the least interesting compared to the madness Jeff Lemire comes out with every month on Sweet Tooth, the pop art dynamism of Mike Allred on I Zombie, or the sheer force of Jock’s masterful works. Ask any grown up who hasn’t been trained for years to enjoy the stylised musclemen and women of modern superhero comics what stands out to them as something that might be worth reading...

“...If I was editor, I would let R.M. Guera do the covers as a straight scene from thee story or try some of the great superhero artists like Ivan Reis, David Finch, Gary Frank or Jim Lee.”

Well thank fuck you’re not Joe! I’d drop that book like a hot turd if you were! Perhaps you should stick to Green Lantern or Legion of Superheroes or some other artistically stunted dross. I’m just going to put up a little compare/contrast for you readers at home.

Vertigo's I, Zombie #1

Jim Lee's X-Men #1

Vertigo's Sweet Tooth #1

David Finch's Psylocke #2



Vertigo's American Vampire #1

Gary Frank's Superman: Secret Origin #2



Vertigo's Hellblazer #275






Ivan Reis' Blackest Night #0



Vertigo's Scalped #38



I guess it’s a matter of taste. Whether you have any, that is.




Stay tuned for parts two and three where I look at the letters from Hellblazer and Jonah Hex!

Oh Do Fuck Off

Valhallahan
I was reading the review of Jonah Hex in a newspaper this morning (they didn’t like it) and they mentioned a part of movie’s plot that really got my goat. It got it good! It seems that Jonah Hex has fallen for two of the old "Comic Book Movie" fuck ups. Firstly, the movie's writers, in their infinite wisdom, have seen fit to give their Jonah Hex supernatural powers. Yup, you read it right, they have given hard boilled western (human) bastard Jonah Hex the power to raise the dead. You see what they’ve done here is to change the character to be more "Comic Book"-y. By this I mean Superhero-y, because every geek worth his salt knows that there is only one genre in the entire sequential art medium and that’s superheroes, right? Fuck off. Why the hooting heck did they not just make a western? Why? I mean I’m pretty sure they have made western movies before, but then again I’m fairly certain cinema only does Rom Coms. I guess the comic book wasn’t "Comic Book" enough for the movies.

The second bugbear, and bear bugs it does, is that they’ve made the movie’s villain the man responsible for branding Jonah’s face. Why? Because everything has to be explained and in the moving pictures (and Daniel Way's Wolverine: Origins) every single thing that happens in a character’s life has to include the four or five main characters every step o’ the way. Nothing is random, which is fine, becuase like Clark Kent in Smallville, I too have never met a new person after the age of seventeen, in fact I’m nigh-certain I’ll never meet anyone I haven’t met already till the day I die. In fact it’ll probably turn out that St Peter was that strangely wise toilet attendant at Indie-Pounder’s I gave a quid to on my 18th birthday. Fuck off.

Hollywood just can’t seem to help themselves but eradicate any aspect of real world randomness in these stories. In Tim Burton’s Batman, The Joker Kills Mr & Mrs Wayne; In the first two Punisher movies (don’t get me started on this one) Frank Castle's family are killed on purpose by the main villain because he is a copper thus totally missing the point that it was the RANDOMNESS of the act that birthed Frank’s war on All Crime Ever; In Spider-Man 3, The Sandman is revealed to have killed Uncle Ben, thus breaking Spider-Man’s entire raison d’etre, he couldn’t have stopped the murder, so I guess he’s off the hook. I bet he feels silly now.

How fucking cute, I see what you did there, it’s like so poignant and stuff.

Did I mention fuck off?