You don’t have to be a filmmaker to know if you like a movie or not, and to offer a critique of it.

You don’t have to be an author to know if you like a book or not, and to offer a critique of it.

And you don’t have to be an illustrator to know if you like a particular drawing or not, and to offer a critique of it.

Several times on this blog, I’ve drawn (get it?!) some fire for coming across as too harsh on a given artist or character or series or costume. Which is fine, that’s why they pay me the big bucks. But critique is a perfectly valid — in some ways, an invaluable — method of refining your own understanding of what you like and, more importantly, why you like it. Any art form can be appreciated (or not) at a gut level, and it’s perfectly fine to live your whole life experiencing it there and no further.

But for a subject you love, like me with comics, there’s so much more you can get out of it with a little time and effort. Which is why this week, I’m going to give YOU the chance to play critic.

I want you to go to Marvel’s site and check out the preview pages at the bottom for Rob Liefeld’s “Deadpool” issue 900. And then I want you to come back here and offer a genuine critique of the work. You don’t have to be mean, or glowing in your praise, or sycophantic, or snidely hip, or anything other than honest. I want you to look at the pages of what will surely be one of the best-selling issues of the year, and I want you to think about what you do and don’t like. Maybe you’ll focus on the panel layouts, or the overall page design. Maybe you’ll focus on the costumes or the environment, or the dialog, or the way the action flows.

Whatever it is you choose to comment on, give it some thought and give me your reaction to it. You all know my opinion of his overall “oeuvre” at this point, so there’s no surprises there, but I don’t want this to just be a bash-fest. The point is for you to take something that generates strong reactions in the viewer (which Deadpool 900 certainly should!) and to examine why you react to it the way you do. To articulate what it is you do and do not like.

Criticism gets a bad rap, because it’s awfully easy to slip from knowledgeable commentary for the purpose of enlightening your own understanding to schoolyard heckling. But it’s an important part of how we understand art, and I think it’s very much worth pursuing.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

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Frequent commenter Jose had some interesting points regarding the “Sons of Scissorhands” post that I wanted to address at more length. He said:

Granted, fanboys (I’m one) get the urge to outshine Superman, Spider-Man, and Wonder Woman (remember the 90’s ‘Bad-Girl’ fiasco?), but when someone wants to create a unique superhero Super-Skrulls and Amalgam Comics is a good place to start.
Is Badger really a Wolverine ripoff anymore than Black Cat or Ms Fury or Tigra or Cheetah (take your pick, DC or Gold Digger) or Vixen or Red Fox or Silver Fox or Hepzibah …etcetera are to… Catwoman?
Just a thought.

I do seem to obsess over 90’s-era Image and I’ve been trying to define exactly why that is.

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I felt kind of bad trashing Marat Mychaels in the Caption Contest post, so I thought I should look him up online and see what he’s been up to since 1992, when the Brigade issue in question was printed. I mean, 17 years is a long time, I figured he’d probably improved since then.

Which, clearly, he has, as you can see at his web site.

But while poking around, I noticed a page from his Store, titled “Nightwing Tryout Page 1″ (already sold) that looked an awful lot — an AWFUL lot — like his gallery page of Blindside. Whoever the heck that is.

For your convenience, here they are side-by-side:

Look, I’m the last person in the world to cast aspersions on someone for re-using art — I do it all the time — but damn. I assume the Blindside work came first, and then was later redrawn with Nightwing’s costume as sample submission. But why bother? If you’re already a published artist, why do you need to try out for something? And if it was the tryout that came first, did he use that basic script later for Blindside?

There’s nothing unethical about any of this as far as I can see (assuming the Nightwing tryout didn’t come with a pre-written script), it’s just kind of weird. I don’t know Marat Mychaels at all, I’d never even heard of him until this morning. His art’s gotten much better, and he’s a published, successful comic book artist, which is far more than I can say. So props to him for that.

It just seems weird, is all.

(All images © Marat Mychaels.)

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I recently rented 2002’s “Comic Book Villains” and I hated it, not because I felt insulted by their depiction of anyone who loves comic books and super heroes as pathetic, anti-social losers, but because I think entertainment in any medium should be a) entertaining and b) not crap.

“Comic Book Villains” failed on both scores.

Poorly written, poorly plotted, haphazardly acted, and offensive when not insufferably stupid, I found very little to like in this movie aside from a couple of good performances from actors who, frankly, should have known better than to take this job.

The plot was insipid, as if the worst parts of super-hero villains were tossed into a blender and only the most inane of their world-beating schemes allowed to escape. Nothing anyone did at any point made sense if you thought about it for more than a second. The characters’ motivations were confused and at times self-contradictory.

I got the feeling the director couldn’t decide what this movie was supposed to be, whether it was a dark comedy or a drama or an outright farce or what. Ultimately I was left with a feeling like “Fargo” had gone under the knife for unsuccessful reconstructive surgery, and what I was left with was a shambling horror with awful bits of its predecessor grafted onto its grotesque corpse.

OK, that’s probably a bit over the top, but I really found myself getting angry while watching “Comic Book Villains” because it had many elements of a good movie. And none of them ever bore fruit. It was a very frustrating experience, and I can’t recommend this film to anyone. For any reason.

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These random comic book baggies are strange. Sometimes I can go through all ten and I get nothing worthy of comment, just a big pile of meh. Other times, one issue is so chock full of great, mockable items I almost can’t believe it. A case in point is “The Life of Captain Marvel”, a 1985 reprinting of Jim Starlin’s 1968 “Captain Marvel” run:
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There were three “Silver Age Classics” in last week’s Random Comic Stack, and reading back through the old issues was a real treat. Besides all the stuff I already knew, I was surprised to discover that everyone in the Fifties and Sixties stuttered. Everyone. It was always from an excess of emotion, and not even Superman was immune to it. Frankly, I blame Watergate, “Three’s Company”, and hippies (in that order) for desensitizing us to the point that no one gets stuttering-inducing fits of emotion in comics any more, which is a real shame when you get right down to it. You have to go to soap operas nowadays to get that level of real feeling, but I have high hopes that Frank Miller will soon have the Caped Crusader go all retro and say “I’m the G-G-Goddam B-B-Batman!”

Anyway, to prove the point, here are a few of the panels from just one of the super stuttering stories in the “Action Comics 252″ reprint. This all takes place in the span of a mere eleven pages, people, and I am not even including all of the examples — there’s more. LOTS more. Know f-f-fear.

(The actual onomontoPOWia is supposed to just be RR, but of course the avalanche stutters.)

I think that last one is my favorite. Either Clark’s an idiot and thinks the natural assumption when someone resists your grip is “That guy must be Superman!”, or Metallo is literally crushing everyone’s hand to pulp.

Besides the overwrought emotions, what really jumps out at me upon reading this issue is what a douche Superman is. Really. He flies in to find Metallo dead because he used fake Kryptonite — conveniently provided by Clark himself — to power his metal heart. And Superman’s only thought is “He brought it on himself” before proceeding to make two tasteless puns about the deceased. This sort of thing has been well documented elsewhere, so I won’t go on, but really, the Golden Age Superman was kind of a jerk.

The other main feature of these early books is just how implausible and slipshod the plotting is. Nothing really makes much sense if you think about it for more than two seconds, and there’s always some weird coincidence that diverts Superman just in time for the criminal to escape. I also love the cavalier way everyone treats uranium, the other power source for Metallo. It sits around in cans on shelves, the Professor who builds the artificial body just happens to have some laying around the lab, etc. etc. I am surprised no one glows in Metropolis.

Make that “I-I’m s-surprised that n-no one g-g-glows in Metroplis.” I wouldn’t want to not fit in, after all.

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In 1985, Marvel (through their mature-audience “Epic Comics” line) published a six-issue limited series written by Chris Claremont and illustrated by John Bolton titled “The Black Dragon”. A “historic fantasy” set in medieval Europe, it was an unusual offering in a super-hero-crowded market. Claremont himself, of course, was best known as the genius behind the enormously successful “Uncanny X-Men”, and has likely been responsible for more comics sold than any other individual in history.

On his web site, Claremont says that he is “especially proud” of his creator-owned “The Black Dragon”, so when I encountered several issues of it in the Great Random Comics Pile, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at why that might be.

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This week’s pile o’ randomness was an interesting batch of butt-kicking, living-island-of-Japan, Robot Fighting madness. It started out with this rather disturbing Barry Windsor-Smith cover illustration of X-O Manowar #5, and I challenge you to tell me just what that … um … “doo-hickey” is on his left pectoral:

All I’m saying is, I sure hope it doesn’t end up sliding further down as the suit finishes forming, ifyouknowhatimean.

Anyway, this batch of random comics was full of contrasting styles and imperatives which I’ll go into after the jump.

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I’m sneaking this last entry in under the aegis of “Rob Liefeld Week” because a) it technically didn’t start until last Tuesday and b) due to an office remodel I didn’t post anything on Friday or Saturday. So suck it, Trebeck!

In this installment of “Retroview” I take on “The New Mutants” number 94, truly a Rob Liefeld masterpiece and a classic of the late 80’s / early 90’s super-hero comics industry:

If you want to learn why Wolverine and Sunspot look like they’re in the middle of an awesome handicapped-stall-handlebar-gripping face-crunching abdomen-flexing Power Dump, follow me after the jump … if you dare!

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Certain iron-clad maxims ruled the naming of comic book characters in the Nineties, and one of the most important (after “Base it on a variant of ‘Blood’, ‘Death’, or ‘Strike’”) was “Include ‘Ninja’ somewhere in there.” Showing the economy of effort that made them almost a success, Valiant decided to just slap an extra letter on the end and thus gave birth to “Ninjak‘:

I’ve always assumed his name was supposed to be read all in one, as if his name were “Jack” but had “Ninja” appended to it, like a shortening of “Ninja Jack”. But now I am forced to wonder if perhaps there was a whole line of these guys a la James Bond and the Double-O series. Like this fellow is eleventh in a series of Ninjas, just after Ninjaj and Ninjai, but before the inevitable rise of Ninjal. Regardless, I think Valiant was really onto something with this naming deal, and I eagerly await the appearance of female sidekick “Ninjill”.

But I digress.

Ninjak used to work for The Weaponeers, a global organization that developed and sold high-tech weapons, before they were eliminated by the terrorist group WEBNET (motto: “All your capital letters are belong to us!”). Eventually he’d go on to confront them and their nefarious plot to distribute “Black Water”, which in some way I can’t be bothered to look up is different from Jed Clampett’s “Black Gold”, also known as “Texas Tea”. I think maybe Ellie Mae worked for them, but this particular issue involves “The Djinn”, an assassin using one of the Weaponeer prototype weapons to kill a diplomat at an airport. Knowing how fond of cameras politicians are, the weapon’s the unlikely union of a gun and a car muffler — you take the guy’s picture, pull the trigger, and the “smart bullet” goes out and kills the dude, no muss, no fuss:

Since you don’t have to be in line of sight, you can be anywhere within 700 meters, we’re told, and still get your man. Through the magic of Google Calculator, I was able to determine that 700 meters is almost half a mile. As a result, the dread Djinn fires his weapon not from nearby Short Term Parking, but from … a bathroom. Apparently smart bullets can open doors, they’re very polite that way.

If you can get past that particular bit of lunacy, you won’t have a problem believing that Ninjak spots the disguised Djinn and follows him onto a plane, which still has taken off on time despite an assassination in the terminal. Sure, they delay my flight for an hour because it’s raining in Kuala Lampur, but off a UN diplomat down the hall and everything’s hunky-dory.

Inevitably there’s a fight onboard the plane, which begins with the Ninja assassin ritual of urinating on nearby objects, leg lifted:

Inevitably the smart gun gets involved, taking a lovely snapshot of Ninjak’s cowled face and thus targeting our hero. One might wonder why he doesn’t just loosen the cowl, or change it out for his shirt or something, but maybe the bullet’s really smart and that wouldn’t have worked. In any event, while it may be smart it’s slower than Christmas:

In fact it’s so slow and so maneuverable that it manages to turn around — twice! — in the narrow confines of an airplane aisle. Now that’s some agile bulleteering, my friends!

Apparently, though, like so many youths in the Nineties the smart bullet is addicted to video games, because Ninjak is able to trick it by waving a Gameboy under its metal nose and tossing the device out the door. No, really. I’m not surprised the Weaponeers were brought down if their best tech can be defeated by Super Mario Kart.

Luckily everything’s brought to a satisfactorily bloody conclusion, with a plane full of dead bodies in the sky and a decapitated Djinn used as a flotation device for our “hero”. My only beef with this issue, besides the completely nonsensical parts between the covers and the wanton bloodshed and the name of the character and the inane physics of the smart gun, is that the cover shows Ninjak with a sword while in the comic he’s without his weapons, presumably because even in the go-go Nineties you couldn’t pack a blade in your carry-on luggage. Of course no one had a problem with him boarding with metal armor and a kevlar vest, or with Djinn packing in a parachute, smart gun, and high explosives, but then, you can’t expect airport security to catch everything.

(All images and story from “Ninjak”, Vol. 1, No. 7, ©1994 Voyager Communications, Inc. Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, and Mark Moretti, writers; Andrew Currie, penciller; Andy Lanning and Jennifer Marrus, inkers; John Cebollero, colorist.)

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