Comic review: Guardians of Knowhere #1- Bendis poops out another classic

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Mike Deodato
Colours: Frank Martin
Publisher: Marvel (Disney)
Released: 15th July 2015


I haven’t read any Bendis for a while. I’d been deliberately avoiding him, mainly because I was fed up with the way that he writes jokes into his dialogue, mimimising what is happening, turning every character into a vehicle where he can show off just how witty and clever that he is as a writer.

I used to enjoy him, but I changed. I started to read, to learn about important things, and the cleverness of people like Bendis and Tarrantino and Kevin Smith no longer had any power over me. The magic diminished. I was no longer young and obsessed with cool. I started to hate clever, started to hate cool, I wanted real, and I wasn’t seeing real in any of my old reading and viewing material.

Now, when I see a Tarrantino flick I’m disgusted with the violence, the casual disregard for human life, the swearing, the cool factor dripping in gore, it disgusts me. Kevin Smith is a joke to me now, a drugged up blob who cannot fit into an airline seat. A masturbating child-man, regurgitating young man stoner jokes, unable to reflect anything but ego, a self-love touring machine, cleverness declining, he had some good jokes, but now has nothing to say.

And Brian Michael Bendis, the comic book genius of my past. He’s still here in 2015, and he’s still up to his old tricks. Why did I pick up this book? I really don’t know. Call it an accident, or call it fate, but I purchased the book, and here’s what I thought of it.

In ‘Guardians of Knowhere #1’ writer Brian Michael Bendis is working with a brilliant artist in Mike Deodato, and an equally as talented colourist in Frank Martin.

They hide his flaws so very well.

The narrative is, as is usual with Bendis, unimportant. It’s the characters, the quips, the dialogue, and the cool factor that is important. The plot is background to the characters, just as it always is. There’s vague references to not believing in God/Doom, but not believing in a higher power is common place today, especially amongst the young, and there’s no real rebellion coming from them, none that I can see anyway, so sod the young. If this book engages in a bit of religion/god bashing, then all it’s going to be doing is preaching to the already long converted. There’s no controversy there, well, not unless it mentions Allah, and I’m 100% certain that it’s not going to be doing that.

The narrative meat of issue #1 involves an order follower doing what order followers do, and a bunch of rebels doing what rebels do, fighting and eventually running from the aforementioned order follower. In comic books the order followers are evil because they work for dictators. In reality order followers will work for anybody. Pay them to kill, and they will kill. It’s not about dictators; it’s about the immorality of following orders in the first place. Comic books hide that truth, because the truth is hidden within the lie that is democratic, neoliberal statism, the lie that is the backbone not just to comic books, but the entire western world as it is today.

So is Bendis going to say something about statism, neoliberal democracy and the immorality of following orders in this book?

Don’t be daft. He has a career to think about, so all you are going to get here is more evil dictator stuff, and so it proves at the conclusion of this limp first issue.

Most of the characters in the book talk like teenagers. I find that to be very telling, as that is the mindset and level of emotional maturity that the book is set at. The readers might not be teenagers in physical years, but ‘Guardians of Knowhere #1’ is a book that only a teenage mindset could enjoy.

‘That was like, so totally uncool and disrespectful man.’

That line wasn’t actually in the book, but it might as well have been. I can’t stand this teen idiot talk. I’m forty-two years old, and this too cool for school teen dialogue is annoying the heck out of me. Every line of dialogue concludes with a knowing joke, or a pun, or an attempt to be cool. It’s annoying, really, really annoying. People don’t talk like that in the real world. The only people that talk like that are characters in a bad US television show that is being played for cheap laughs. What is being created here is a world where nothing is real, nothing is important, and nothing matters. It’s a sad clown joke where you fart, laugh and savour the pungent aroma of cool, clever, smug self-satisfaction that is suffocating the life out of everything.

It’s amazing how far you can go on cool, clever, smug self-satisfaction. With this prized combination you can enjoy a lengthy career writing comic books. People will queue up and worship you, not because you have anything to say, but because you do the postmodernism thing, because you make things look cool, and because you come across as ‘one of the fans.’ Readers can convince themselves that they are part of a select little club, that they are clever, that they are cool. They understand the knowing jokes and references. They are educated. They have a degree. They love it. Give them more of the wisecracking Racoon, they’ll eat that s*** up with a spoon. They love the Racoon, they are smart, they have joined the super secret special team, and you (as the great writer) can sit at the convention and have these poor saps bow to you, worship you, and to literally throw money at your no-nothing, saying nothing feet.

Yay, team geek, the saddest people in the room, telling themselves that they are cool over and over again until they become so deluded that they actually start to believe that it’s true. Sorry kids, it’s not true at all. Losers buy comic books. Winners write and draw them, and they look at their customers as walking bags of money. Welcome to the latest big comic book convention, populated by walking bags of loser money and corporate vampires. How depressing it all is.

I paid money for this book, and now it’s sitting on my computer desk laughing at me, telling me that I’m the fool. I’m the moron. I’m the sucker. I’m the dupe. I’m the loser. Oh crap, I hate it when the talking comic book is right, and now I hate myself because that last line read like something that bloody Bendis himself would write.

I need to flush this one away as soon as possible. I need to wipe away the soiled memories and get back to reading something of worth. I was such an idiot as a young man, and this comic book reminds me of the idiot that I used to be. It reminds of my wasted youth, of reading cool nothingness from corporate clones, and I don’t enjoy that empty feeling anymore. I’m over cool. I’m all grown up now, and I no longer have time to waste on pointless, nauseating, cool and clever comic books.

Reading this book took me back to a time and place that I no longer recognise. It’s funny how the past becomes alien after a while. Was I really there at all? Did I really think and do those stupid things. I did, but I’m not the same person anymore. My past embarrasses me, and this latest comic book invitation to return has never felt less appealing.


Rating: 6/10 (More of the same from the Bendis machine, this time with superior art helpers)