Buy These F**king Comics! – July 25, 2012: Zen and the Art of Underwater Welding
Welcome, welcome, welcome, to the funny book column at the end of the Internet. Or perhaps more specifically, at some abandoned asteroid-mining station spiraling into terminal descent. We here aboard the rickety ship don’t have much to comfort ourselves outside of the weekly comic book drop that comes courtesy of the spectra-gryphons sailing the solar waves. Drunk on cheap bathtub fermented moon juice and delusional from the vertigo, I admit my picks for worthwhile comic books can strike the bow a bit askew.
That’s where you come in, friends. Pull down the the blast shield long enough to bark out your finds in staccato bursts, before retiring to your dimly lit crevice in this here rotting rooster of a spaceship.
Don’t know what’s coming out? Pivot sharply and race down the cyber-wells towards the glowing info-cube. Comic List.
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Spaceman #8
This Azzarello and Risso jam drops almost every month, and each and every time it makes its way towards my heart. Wriggling underneath my spacesuit, biting its way through my coarse unwashed loins. It nuzzles up next to my meat-pump and crones into my soul, “see, the Apocalypse can seem appealing!” The sort of fetishistic appreciation for our own Doom. An appreciation for it that we must embrace, lest we get subsumed into the despair of our rotting culture, reality-show cults, and economic disparity. I’m not sure how I’d do it, but after catching Beasts of the Southern Wild recently, I would love to work some sort of juxtaposition between the series and film investigating physical locations and how they’re reflective of socioeconomic situations. There’s something to be said for the parallels of “Drise” in Spaceman, the levees in New Orleans, and the discussion of it in pop culture.
Or maybe I’m just a bored graduate student looking down the barrell of jacking off for the fifth time today.
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Manhattan Projects #5
Superior being Ray the Destroyer put it best recently when he opined that he had no fucking idea (swear words mine, sentiment his) where this title was going. I sure as shit don’t have a clue either. That’s fine with me. When the spectacle kicked off, I would never have anticipated the title running through the end of the second World War by the third issue. Now the title is evolving into utter mayhem. Doppelgangers upon doppelgangers. FDR’s dumb dead consciousness gone full artificial intelligence. Genocidal aliens.
This jam could spit as the monthly funny book equivalent of an X-Files “monster of the week” issue for the next two years, and I’d be sated. Yes Hickman, unfurl your alternate history fetish for all of us to lick upon. Yes Pitarra, continue translating Hickman’s banana bread madness into gorgeous pencil. And for fuck’s sake let us not forget Jordie Bellaire and her gorgeous colors on the title. I mean, I can’t recall a title where my simple simian brain-skull was so titillated by the strategic use of color throughout a work.
Bonus.
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Marvel Fanboy Pants Stain
Weeks like this make it clear that I an an unrepentant Marvel fanboy. Or rather, some odd derivation of the fanboy apparatus. To be a fanboy implies a dearth of metacognition. That ain’t happening over here. I’m aware, all too aware, of my proclivity for the marvelous universe. As well, it isn’t like I’ll defend them to the hilt if they’re going way errant on the reals. I just dig on their universe. Slop on the lipstick and go to smacking town when Eddie Brubaker, Johnny Hickman, Sam Humphries, or Rick Remender comes aronud. That’s why I’m sweating new issues of Uncanny X-Force, Winter Soldier, Secret Avengers, and Ultimate Comics: The Ultimately Ultimate Avengers this week. I know it looks bad. Especially when you come into the computer room and I’m wearing nothing but frosted Hulk mitts and I’m licking Rick Remender’s Twitter timeline. Just remember folks, the love is real.
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Underwater Welder
As a comic book fan, Jeff Lemire honors my prefontal cortex. Dude throws in some heady stuff in Sweet Tooth, while at the same time never being too far away from adding flat-out fun in titles such as Justice League Dark. As a man of Canadian descent, Jeff Lemire honors my heritage. Yeah I come from the hills of maple syrup where it rains socialist hockey pucks. Proud of it, too. In his latest graphic novel, Lemire has corset these two honors up into one bountiful body. I’ll level with you. Just “Jeff Lemire’s newest graphic novel” sold me on Underwater Welder, so I haven’t looked much into the plot. As grandma always said, if you’re going to take her home, don’t bother looking up her skirt. She was Canadian, too. Had six teeth and nine toes, could shoot a squirrel from a quarter mile with her perpetually lactating left nipple, and killed her third husband with poison rappie pie. All of which is to say, trust me, it’s going to be awesome.
Demand a preview? Here you go, you caution son (or daughter) of a bitch.
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Prophet #27
With each issue of Prophet that actually exists, I double down on my supplication to the sticks-of-butter and furs-of-animals crafted Comic Book Deity that sits in my parents’ backyard. These toe nails of mine don’t grow themselves, and as I pull with frantic haste, ripping and shredding cutaneous tissue, I know it is all worth it. Prophet exists. If the title dropped dead tomorrow, I would still consider it a monument to inventive science-fiction somehow apparating out of the stultifying practicality of the industry where sales and sensibility matter most. How such an esoteric operation continues trudging forth with its minimal narratives and bonkers ideas is almost beyond me. Then I remember. Lord Butter and Fur, melting in the summer heat. It must be maintained. For Prophet. For Brandon Graham and his legion of talented artists. For me. For us.
You-us-me are welcome.
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What are you buying this week, folks? Hit me.