Comic review: Big Man Plans #1- It’s about a Dwarf stabbing people in the neck and face

Writers: Eric Powell and Tim Wiesch
Artist: Eric Powell
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 4th March 2015


Is it particularly clever or worthwhile to either read or write a comic book about a bullied Dwarf who spends his life stabbing people in the neck and/or face?

Umm, if you are the writer and people buy the book, and if you make ‘F**k you money’ out of it (this apparently is the only thing that drives writers Tim Wiesch and Eric Powell) then I guess it was worthwhile.

But what if you are the reader? I’m the reader, and I feel like I’ve just given my money to a couple of sociopaths. I feel like I’ve given money to people who want to get dirty, filthy rich not because they feel like the money can help anyone, but no, because they want to use the money to abuse people instead.

How did I get this impression?  I got it from writer Tim Wiesch in a page titled, ‘What the f**k just happened?’ The page describes the motivations (in his own words) behind the writing of Big Man Plans. Here’s a section of that article:

‘I really hope that a lot of people buy this thing because f**k-you money ain’t easy to come by…..and Eric and I have some big f*****g plans.’ (Tim Wiesch)

These plans involve replicating scenes from a serial killer movie and other stupid things that only a hipster douchebag or immature teenage boy from 1991 would find funny.

Well, that’s made me feel great guys. Thanks for that Tim. Now I know that your life goals are to get rich, and to use and abuse people. What can I say? Have you ever thought about getting involved in politics?  I’m not very impressed with that mindset at all. It’s not clever, it’s not funny, it’s just depressing, deeply, deeply depressing.

Rant over, so what is this book all about then? It’s about a little man, a Dwarf. We follow his life as a young little man. His Dad is nice. His Mother isn’t. She leaves him, and the family. Dad drinks heavily, then dies in a barn fire. Young little man and his sister are taken away by social services. Sister goes to a nice home because she is pretty. Young little man gets beaten up and abused in care homes because he is a Dwarf. From there he tries to join the army, fails, and is taken into a special unit where he is broken down and stripped of his humanity, and then sent down Vietnamese tunnels (and why are comic books in 2015 still talking about Vietnam when they should be talking about Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria?) where his job is to stab people in the face, murdering people for the banks and corporations that operate under the corporate fiction known as the USA.

After his legalised murder unit is disbanded, an older little man comes home to the US where he gets into bar-fights and stabs people in the neck, but it’s okay because the guy he stabs in the neck has a swastica on his forehead. The book concludes with the Dwarf wielding a hammer and looking to hurt more people because his childhood sucked and because the army turned him into a secondary psychopath.

Okay, so what am I supposed to say about all of this? Am I supposed to go…………Cooooooooooool maaaaaaaaaan????????????? Come on. Come off it. What the Hell????

I can’t even be bothered to properly finish off this review. I feel gross even writing about this book. Okay, so it has some truth in it. It shows that abused people become abusers, and that the US army is the perfect place for psychopaths, that they deliberately manufacture psychopaths in order to carry out legalised butchery. Okay, that’s real, that exists, but we already know about that, and I’m going to repeat myself here…WHY THE HELL IS IT STILL SET IN VIETNAM??????

That’s it, end of review.

Unpleasant book. Yuck, yuck, yuck. If you want to do yuck in 2015 please set it in Iraq, at least then we can get something new and contemporary out of it.


Rating: 3/10 (Although I hate the book I do admire Eric Powell’s artistic abilities)

Comic review: Darth Vader #1- The Glorification of a Psychopath

Writer bot: Keiron Gillen
Artist: Salvador Larroca
Publisher: Marvel (Disney)
Released: 11th February 2015



I’m not going to slaughter this book, as I knew exactly what I was going to get before I read it.

Here’s a Marvel (Disney) mainstream corporate whore comic book written by a writer (Kieron Gillen) who is so unmemorable that I cannot recall any of his previous work, even though he’s been writing mainstream comic books for many years now.

Gillen, Bendis, Fraction, Waid, Snyder, Slott, Aaron, Parker, Lemire, Hickman and all the rest of them working in the mainstream are pretty much the same. They concentrate on characters and plot, conform to the politically correct norms that the neo-liberal globalist consensus dictates, and pump out unit shifter after unit shifter without offending, and without saying a single useful thing about the state of the world as it is today. That’s okay, they have every right to do that, but I also have every right to not buy their books, and that is what I do, with the odd exception of course.

So when I get Darth Vader #1 by writer bot no 24445 Gillen I don’t exactly expect it to be subtly dealing with geo-political issues. I don’t expect clever references to contemporary surveillance state concerns, privacy issues, corporate crime, illegal foreign wars based on lies, the funding of international terrorism and all of the other sick things that democratic western elites are getting up to today.

What I do expect from a corporation like Marvel/Disney is a book that ignores all of the things that an intelligent, brave, moral and truth centred writer would discuss, and instead to focus the reader’s attention on trivial personality issues involving the cult of personality toybox stars that were created a long, long time ago, and maximised for corporate profit ever since.

That’s exactly what I get in Darth Vader #1, so no surprises. We follow Vader as he interacts with some of the more successful villains of the franchise (Boba Fett, Jabba the Hutt, the Emperor) and I guess the enjoyment to be had is the ‘Wow, that was cool’ factor as we see large panels of him standing in Jabba's palace and deftly avoiding the trap-door that leads to that big lizard monster thing that Jabba feeds his victims to. Is it fun? Kind of, on a surface level, but let’s delve a bit deeper here.

Who are we supposed to be empathising with here? It’s Darth Vader, right? He’s the name on the cover, and it’s his story that the book is following as he attempts to salvage his career in the evil empire after the right balls up he made with the Death star being blown to bits. Is he supposed to be a sympathetic character though? In this book he is a psychopath in a black uniform randomly murdering people in a stylised ‘cool’ manner in order to get his career moving again, and to settle old personal scores.

That’s the worst kind of person, right? That is the kind of person who has no problems machine gunning civilians or leading naked prisoners into gas chambers. It’s the kind of person who happily follows orders, thinking only of himself and perhaps a possible promotion if he gets the job of mass murder done as quickly and efficiently as possible.

That is who Darth Vader is, and that is exactly how he is written in this book, so writer bot 24445 Gillen has to be congratulated on that point. What he needs to be called out on however is that he makes Vader’s actions look cool, he makes them look like they are the actions of a strong, powerful individual and not what they actually are, the actions of a weak, order following snivelling coward.

The impression that what Vader is doing here is super cool, awesome man, high five dude is helped along by the artwork where order following Darth is portrayed in the most flattering light possible. He’s big, he’s heroic, and he’s a super cool badass.

Yeah, and he’s also a cold, callous, in it only for himself secondary (made, not born) psychopath, so perhaps we shouldn’t be glorifying the guy, right?

So that’s the book. More glorification of the worst kind of person, the kind of person that the corporate elite’s rely upon to maintain the status quo in the world as it is today. A world owned and controlled by a tiny number of corporate/banking elites, and kept in murderous disorder by their bought and paid for gangs of order following mass murdering career obsessed psychopaths in black uniforms.

All of this will of course fly over the heads of the majority of comic book readers (and fanboy writer bots) as they act like children and praise the book for being cool, and Boba Fett is in it, and wow, that was like totally awesome, yawn. Wake up, wake up, wake up. Take a step back, take a deep breath of air, look at the world, and then read the book again. It’s the glorification of a Police state psychopath, and the plot is the same old stuff that Dark Horse was doing with a browbeaten and angry Vader trying to prove his worth to the Emperor, it’s not good, not good at all.

Rating: 4/10 (Slightly below average corporate, neo-liberal, police state comic book) 

Comic review: Green Lantern #37- Godhead, Act 3, Part 1: Ranting away about sofa geek culture

Writer: Robert Venditti
Artist: Francis Portela
Publisher: DC Comics
Released: 3rd December 2014


I had something like six or seven back episodes of Gotham (the new television show about a young Bruce Wayne) to watch on my futuristic surveillance device/television, but yesterday I deleted them all.

I did this after watching half an hour of an episode that was focussed on the young Penguin character. He’s the best thing about the show, but as I was watching his violent and manipulative adventures something dawned upon me. It was the realisation that this man on my television set, a murdering psychopath, was being portrayed as a strong willed hero, a man that we should be looking up to as a role model. The television viewer was being manipulated into feeling admiration and empathy for the man. Everything the Penguin was doing was made to look cool and empowering. I could almost here a voice coming from my television set saying:

‘Hey comic book geeks, isn’t it cool to be a psychopath? Don’t you just want to be a psychopath as well?’ 

Okay, so I’m exaggerating to make my point, but I hope you understand what I’m getting at here. I keep seeing this glorification of illness, with diseased, feeble, broken cowards made to look like the coolest guy in the room. It’s the Dexter effect, the Breaking Bad effect, the Game of Thrones effect, the Joker tormenting Batman with his own face held on by rubber bands behind his ears. It’s this sense of joy at embracing the worst elements of humanity. A celebration, a glorification of inhumanity towards your fellow man, but all dressed up in this soft voyeurism that screams suburbs and smart bombs and drone attacks and pathetic, lame, flabby cowardice.

Is this a 2014 trend, or was it always there, lurking in the back of sofa geek culture? I call it ‘sofa geek’ culture for a good reason. It’s a flabby watching but not getting involved culture that isn’t really a culture at all. It’s the reason why I don’t attend comic-cons, even though I’m sure I’d pick up some good rare books there. It’s this feeling that my comic book hobby reflects the worst aspects of myself. It turns me into something that I don’t want to be. A lazy, silent watcher, an audience member, an anonymous face in the braying idiot crowd, a man who thinks that violence is cool, but has never been in a real fist-fight in his entire life.

Why I am bringing up this unappealing sense of weakness and the revelling in disease and violence from a distance that is indelibly imprinted upon the sofa geek culture? Why am I mentioning the Penguin character and my deleting back episodes of the Gotham television programme? It’s because there’s a character in Green Lantern #37 who encapsulates every sick aspect that I’ve just been railing against. That character is another sofa geek hero/psychopath called, ‘Black Hand.’

Black Hand sadly laments, ‘I was born after all the good wars.’ No you weren’t mate. You are living in a period of never-ending war right now. If he really is supposed to be some creature that gets off on war then he would know that, but no, he’s that curious mainstream media murder junky that can’t see reality past his television set.

This Black Hand character dominates the narrative of Green Lantern #37. He’s seen revelling in the worst aspects of humanity. He loves war and death, but he’s strangely stuck on the History channel version of war and death, and doesn’t appear to recognise that war didn’t end after the Nazi’s were ‘defeated’ in 1945.

His character reminds me of somebody who sees war as a story told in a history book, not something that is happening all around him right now. Not something that he himself funds through quiet acquiescence to the unaccountable state apparatus of slavery, torture, incompetence, misery and death.

War is Hitler isn’t it? War is a dusty history book, a black and white television documentary, a DVD box set? It’s that kind of mentality, that kind of wilful ignorance about the world as it is today that I see again and again in my comic books and it bugs the Hell out of me.

It really does sicken me, and for the rest of the book this death obsessed, but out of touch sofa geek is portrayed as a grim reaper with cool factor. He’s a child with suburban serial killer fantasies, but with access to power that backs up what he’s saying, making him look far more important and impressive than Hal Jordan, the character in this book who is supposed to be the hero that the audience identifies with.

I’m getting the sense here that writer Robert Venditti actually admires the Black Hand. The Black Hand is soooo kewl, and Green Lantern is so lame after all. I can’t stand it, and that voice is talking to me again, it’s saying again and again:

‘Hey comic book geeks, isn’t it cool to be a psychopath? Isn’t it cool to be a psychopath? Isn't it cool to be a psychopath?

ENOUGH!!!!!!!

It is not cool to be a psychopath. It is not cool to obsess over death and stamping on your neighbour’s face forever. Torture is not cool. Drones are not cool. War is not cool. Death is not cool. These things are a symbol of weakness, not strength. Celebrating these aspects of humanity makes you spindly, feeble, enslaved, stupid, weak and ugly. You are a drone pilot with a jumbo carton of Pepsi diet poison, medals on his chest, flabby gut hanging out, press fire on the console, wedding party destroyed, time for more medals and football. Oh, a kid just shot up a school again? How did that happen? We better ban guns now, eh? War is peace, ignorance is strength, I’m voting for Bush/Clinton again.

That is the image I get when I see the Black Hand, or the Joker or the Penguin or whatever new psycho of the week portrayed as a sofa geek hero. It bother’s the Hell out of me, because it’s a symptom of the underlying disease that runs through the comic book industry, and the entire mainstream media as a whole.

It’s ugliness, celebrated, lauded and then put up against Batman, the Green Lantern, Commissioner Gordon, all of these statist control freaks who are there to restore order and protect the poor innocent victims/civilians. It’s a con game, a simplistic light and dark show for simpletons where the light are uniformed order followers and the dark are celebrated sofa geek cool psychopaths.

It’s a slaughterhouse psychological operation targeting the collective mind of the corporate media consuming slave public. They are telling you that it’s cool to be a psychopath, but at the same time they are telling you that the state must prevail to protect you against the very thing that is being pushed as cool and desirable. I’m not saying it’s deliberate. I’m not saying it’s a ‘conspiracy,' but it’s there, a disease that is messing with us all. That’s a mind trip, don’t you think?

I need to explore this celebration of psychopathy and it’s duel aspect the control system of the state a bit deeper, but for now I’ll finish this up as it’s already far too long. Hopefully I’ve managed to convey something in this review, something more than you’ll get in your typical comic book review anyway. That’s the entire point here. That is why I am doing these ‘reviews.’ They are not really ‘reviews’ at all, but you knew that, right? Thanks for reading. Hopefully I managed to say something here, and yes, this train of thought will continue on my blog, writing, as I do, free from corporate constraint, and free to say whatever the Hell I want to say.

It’s not about comics, it’s not about getting myself a job on a stupid keep your mouth shut and get re-tweets corporate comic book web-site. It’s about saying whatever is on my mind. Comic books and the other media that I consume feed my mind, and stimulate a response. I’m a big-mouthed annoying guy, and when I read something I like to tell people all about it. I say things that people don’t want to hear, but sod it. I’d rather say it than keep it to myself. That’s why I’m here, that’s why I’m writing on this blog. 

Rating: 5/10 (for the narrative progression that is keeping me interested in the arc)