RUSE #3

Do I not have good ideas? Or are my ideas just so damn good that others also have them and they become published & filmed? I wrote a book, Small Town, about a twenty year-old writer in the suburbs that inadvertently becomes a private investigator, albeit not licensed or trained or anything. HBO has a show now with the same premise, Bored to Death, based on a short story by Jonathan Ames. I had an idea for a comic book titled Alpha Delta Death that was basically Lord of the Flies but with Sorority girls. A new book just came out called Beauty Queens that has the same premise, albeit it's a plane of beauty pageant girls that crash on an island. & I'm currently writing Detectives in London, a novel that features a female investigator working alongside a male investigator in old-times London. Ruse, Mark Waid's comic, has a similar premise; what if a female was paired with a Sherlock Holmes type dude? Ruse has been out for awhile; they did thirty-odd issues when it was published at Cross-Gen. That company went out of business but Marvel just bought the rights to all their books and are putting out a few new mini-series of the same books. Mark Waid is still writing this but artist Butch Guice is sadly only doing the covers. They've also nixed the gargoyles walking amongst the people but otherwise it's the same. The problem is that it's an utter rip-off of Sherlock Holmes. The art in this particular issue is fairly awful, done by Rob Steen, who didn't even bother to pencil #1 or #2 (a fill-in artist on a four part series makes little sense). It tries to be whip-smart and fun, but it's merely adequate. Even the big mystery is fairly murky stuff. I don't know...maybe I'm just jealous that this got published before me. *1/2

PUNISHER MAX #13

When superstar writer Jason Aaron was announced as the new writer on the "mature content" Punisher Max title, I got excited. Thirteen issues in, though, and I'm underwhelmed. We got a Kingpin storyline, a Bullseye storyline, and now a Prison/Vietnam storyline. From that you can already tell that Aaron isn't breaking new ground. In this issue, part two of "Frank," The Punisher is in jail and remembering his past when he got back from Vietnam and had to seamlessly fit back into regular life. He got a job at a slaughterhouse and didn't mind when the prick inspector got his hand caught in a grinder. In prison, a tough dude called The Big Jesus seems to be attempting a plot to kill Frank. The issue feels like an action-less issue of Jason Aaron's Scalped; it's meditative, trying to be dark but emotional. Scalped is fresh, though. We've seen all of this before in The Punisher. Even the forced, over-the-top violence doesn't mesh with the emotional core of what Aaron is trying to work in. The art, by Preacher's Steve Dillon, is quality stuff, but all of his characters do look alike, and for some reason The Punisher doesn't look right; too weird looking, too off-key. If you do want to read a fresh, fun, extremely wild book by Aaron, pick up Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine. It's so fucking good...what I had hoped this would have been. *1/2

FLASHPOINT #1

Remember Back to the Future 2? Yeah, it kind of sucked...but remember when the old man Biff steals the sports book, takes it back in time, and then Marty and Doc end up traveling back to a new world where things are the same but slightly different (like, a black family is now living in Marty's home and Biff is super rich)? That's the story with Flashpoint, DC's big event series. The Flash wakes up in a world that's slightly different. Superman doesn't exist and Batman is kind of evil. While this parallel-world plot has been done before, it's nice that a big event book is finally not just about a group of superheroes banding together to face one big evil threat. That's refreshing. The art is also terrific (Andy Kubert) but the issue isn't anything special. It doesn't do enough to make me care to read #2 or the endless amount of spin-offs (in June there are 21 spin-off issues...yikes). The other problem is that there's 8 pages where a bunch of heroes argue. Boring. & I thought DC was "drawing the line at $2.99?" Why is this book $3.99? So far this is about as good as Marvel's big event series, Fear Itself. Is it just me, or do event books totally suck? **

MOON KNIGHT #1

Marvel is re-launching three series this summer with new, popular creative teams. Daredevil and The Punisher start later on but the first out of the box is Moon Knight, which is being written by Brian Bendis and drawn by Alex Maleev. Obviously, Maleev and Bendis' last two books sucked hard (Spider-Woman and Scarlet), so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from this. I really don't know anything about Moon Knight. The last time the book was even on my radar was when Stephen Platt was drawing it (remember him?). That was...when? 1994? I miss Platt. The last thing I heard was that he was drawing story boards for Hollywood. Why do all the great artists seem to leave? Anyway, Moon Knight #1 is 32 pages for $3.99. That's the best part. The story has Moon Knight in L.A. getting help from Wolverine, Captain America, and Spider-Man to take down the new top gangster there. The story and dialogue are basic stuff. Bendis is either writing too many books and getting burned out or he's just already used every good idea he's had (and he has written what, like a thousand issues already of various books?). Maleev is a good artist when he's drawing people. He's not good at drawing superheroes. That, or 32 pages made him do a rush job. This issue is standard when we all hoped for a masterpiece. **

THE MIGHTY THOR #1

I'm a writer and I tend to think that I could make any superhero comic book better if I wrote it. It's not being narcissistic, it's just that I write what I like, and if I wrote Spider-Man or Batman it would be an issue with characters, a story, a tone, and dialogue that I would enjoy. The one book that I doubt even I could make compelling is Thor. Maybe it's the way he speaks, maybe it's the fact that he only has one villain, but I'm surprised he's lasted this long (and has a big-budget Hollywood film coming out Friday). Thor is dull. I did enjoy writer J. Michael Straczynski's short run on the book a few years back, but even his run was helped by awesome artist Olivier Coipel, who returns here for writer Matt Fraction's new #1 issue. This issue isn't awful but it isn't very fun, readable, or enjoyable. Fraction has fun writing Iron Man, but with Thor he hasn't come up with any good ideas. This issue features Thor finding the World Tree, Loki morphing into a child for no good reason, and the Silver Surfer (still comic book's worst idea) looking for Galactus. Even Coipel's art is a little less brilliant and perfect as it usually is. Straczynski made Loki a hot chick and now Fraction makes Loki a child. Yawn. Realistically, I couldn't even make Thor interesting. *