Comic book blitz review: Green Lantern: Futures End #1- A gathering of no meaning

Writer: Robert Venditti
Artist: Martin Coccolo & Aaron Lopresti
Publisher: DC comics
Released: 3rd September 2014


This book does not deserve a long and detailed review, so I’m not going to give it one. The plot is about the Green Lantern fighting dead zombie type characters called The Black Lanterns, with a main villain called Krona.

The fight takes place in space, and bookends the narrative. A simple technique, you begin and end with a fight scene. The problem however is that the meat in the sandwich is flavourless and very, very bland. That meat here is the Green Lantern chatting with the ghost of his dead dad. It comes across as extremely perfunctory, and going through the motions.

The dialogue is horrible, so no empathy is gained for the characters. There’s no connection to humanity in the writing at all. I’m reading about these characters and they never feel real, at all. They feel like two dimensional movie characters in a movie where the script plays second fiddle to the action scenes.

It’s difficult to care about fictional characters when they lack all elements of human individuality that makes an individual an individual. It’s not just the awful dialogue that dooms this book though; it’s the very concept of death itself. A dead man is crying over his dying son, yet the dead man is not really dead, so what makes him so sad that his son is dying when his very existence shows that death is no big deal here anyway? It makes it impossible to care, at all about what is happening here.

This is a unit shifter of a book with space zombies, average art, terrible dialogue and a sense that we are just going through the motions here. It’s such a lazy book. The script has no emotional, thematic depth. I can’t find anything in it because there is nothing there. It’s a very bad book, and this review has been longer than it deserves.

Rating: 3/10 (for the awesome 3D cover)

Comic book review: Cloaks #1- Robin Hood meet One Direction, meet David Blaine, meet Occupy Wallstreet

Writer: Caleb Monroe
Artist: Mariano Navarro
Publisher: Boom Studios
Released: 4th September 2014

Cloaks #1 is a cute, fluffy, merry little waltz of a comic book, set on the streets of one of those big cities that you always see in comic books, with a young street magician protagonist and a couple of brief allusions to the criminal scumbags operating out of the financial district of the city.

The books begins with a funeral, but even the corpse is smiling, and when a street magician is intimidated by fat cops they come across as silly rather than as the menacing shoot you in the head for their own safety kind of coward, thug cops that have been causing so many problems in American cities like Ferguson, Missouri recently.

The main protagonist in ‘Cloaks’ is a cute boyband type who helps orphans and does magic tricks for free in the streets, organising his gigs via social-media. How does he make a living? It appears that he robs the rich to give to the poor, using his parkour skills (which are shown in the best panel of the book) and other street magic tricks to make his daring, and cinematic thefts.

I had problems rooting for this character, as he is a bit too cute, a bit too perfect, a bit too fluffy to come across as a real, flesh and blood person. He’s fantasy boyfriend material for young girls, so as an adult male it’s a bit difficult for me to get too excited about his adventures, even though I’m obviously in favour of Robin Hood type characters in my comic books, especially in this day and age of corporate, state sanctioned crime, with no consequences for rich criminals and massive consequences for anybody that doesn’t want to join their criminal control systems.

The book ends with a chase and the boy given an ultimation by what appears to be a gang of special agents. Who are they, are whom do they work for? Are they state sanctioned three letter (CIA, FBI) criminals, or people trying to do some good in the world? That’s the hook for the next issue, but is it enough for me? I’m not sure it is, but that’s not to say it’s a bad book, because it isn’t. The art is big, bold and colourful, the story is easy to follow and the tone of the writing is reader friendly, light and enjoyable. I’d recommend it to young female comic book fans, but for for an old git like myself it’s just a bit too light, a bit too unthreatening and a bit too cute, cuddly and fluffy for me to get terribly excited by it all.

Rating: 7/10

Comic book review: The Names #1- I dedicate this review to the fanboys out there

Writer: Peter Milligan
Artist; Leandro Fernandez
Publisher: Vertigo (DC)
Released: 3rd September 2014



It will be interesting to see how well this comic fares, as it’s dealing with something that a lot of the 1990’s obsessed fanboys fear more than anything else. Yes, I’m talking about the dreaded R word……

REALITY.

Yeah, I know that was a bit harsh, but it’s true on a lot of levels as well. This book is dealing with something that has hit the news recently, something that looks like a series of coincidences, but to those of a more conspiratorial mind-set looks like forming an ominous pattern, being indicative of something sinister going on, and something catastrophic that is yet to come.

That ‘something’ is the recent spate of bank assholes that have committed ‘suicide.’ Or did they really commit suicide at all? That’s where ‘The Names’ begins, with a bank tosser being forced to write a suicide note before taking a swan dive out of his office window.

There’s a great villain introduced early on in the book, and the heroine is a super hot, punch you in the face feminist. You know the kind of woman that Quentin Tarrantino creams himself over, the middle class wet blanket that he is. There’s a reason that comic book fans love Quentin and his 1970’s homage movies. The reason is that they feature strong, independent, sexy women. These sexy/manly women are substitutes for a lack of masculinity in the lives of the pathetic, suburb dwelling dweebs who adore Quentin and his N word movies. Watching his movies helps them briefly escape their emasculated realities where political correctness has bathed them in a mind bath of male guilt bullshit. They want to be men, but they feel so very bad about it, so end up being fanboys instead, with an empathise on ‘boys.’ Lacking any manhood in themselves they look to strong, fictional females to surreptitiously inject some testosterone into their veins. They cheer for the feisty, independent kick-ass women not because they want to sleep with them. No, they wouldn’t do that, because that would mean they are ‘objectifying’ them and that wouldn’t be politically correct, would it? No, they love to watch movies and read comics about these women because they want to be them.

That’s not to say I have problems with her inevitable appearance in this mainstream comic book. I understand why she’s there. She’s bait for the feminist liberal dweebs, and as this comic book business is about getting them to read your stuff I cannot criticise the decision to have her as the main protagonist. People such as myself would prefer a strong independent male protagonist, but I accept that they are rare these days outside of a Conan book, so it is what it is.

The art by the way is great. The cover-art kind of sucks, but the interior art is all dark shadows, atmosphere, angles and creativity. It’s early days, but so far I like it a lot.

If you take a chance on ‘The Names’ you are going to get a book with nice art, a contemporary plot theme, a strong independent woman protagonist and some creepy villains. It’s a good start, the script is engaging with a ‘too cool for school’ dialogue and it’s nice to see a comic book about bank bastards for a change. Oh, and as for my little mid-review rant about feminist liberal comic book fan dweebs, I just put that in there to light a fire underneath some flabby asses. If it sounds like I was talking about you in this review then take it as a big flashing neon sign above your head that says- TIME TO MAN UP, SON. Put the political correctness in the bin and start being a man, not a fanboy waiting in-line at a convention as horrified writers and artists count down the seconds before they can get the hell away from you.

Rating: 8/10

Comic book blitz review: Grayson- Future’s End #1- Uniformly rotten and bordering on the unreadable.

Writer: Tom King and Tim Seeley
Artist: Stephen Mooney
Publisher: DC Comics
Released: 3rd September 2014


There’s a very confusion structure to this book. The narrative is played out in reverse, with an ‘Earlier’ tag on just about every page telling the reader that the story is going back in time, not forward. To me this device does not work because it is both confusing and irritating. Half way through the book I was getting very frustrated, and very lost. I had to re-read the book from back to front to try and make any sense out of it.

The book's confusing narrative begins ‘Five years from now’ in a world where the evil Russian Federation has taken over Eurasia. That’s a contemporary concern, so it’s nice to see it played out in a DC comic for a change. It pretty much plays into the ridiculous mainstream media narrative though with Russia portrayed as the expansionist, war mongering villains and the good guy, heroic super agents representing America doing all they can to save the poor, helpless civilians. Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

Reading this book was like watching the bloody awful mainstream news and that is not a good thing at all. Writer Tom King shows a worrying inability to think outside of the very small box that is given to the average drugged up and dumbed-down television viewer.

The art in this book was uniformly poor, with lazy backgrounds, poorly pencilled facials and weird spatial renderings. I expect much better quality in my comic books than what I got here.

Grayson #1 has a confusing structure and very poor art. The plot is very silly with attractive young special agents fighting against evil mainstream news Russians. It had a great front cover though. I love the 3D effect, it’s just a pity that what’s inside the actual comic is uniformly rotten and bordering on the unreadable.

Rating: 2/10

Comic book review: C.O.W.L. #4- Before our jobs were ‘outsourced’ to Chinese slave factories

Writers- Kyle Higgins and Alec Siegel
Artists: Rod Reis and Stephane Perger
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 27th August 2014


This issue of COWL is the penultimate issue before the end of the first arc, so what it’s doing is setting up a few pins before issue #5 knocks them all down. There are quite a few pins, and if you start reading the book at this issue you’ll just be hopelessly confused by it all. This book isn’t exactly simple anyway, and I always take my time with it because everything is so subtle and the characters are constantly lying to each other. You don’t know who, or what to believe, and there are quite a few characters in the book as well, so unless you take your time with it, this book can be frustratingly difficult to decipher. I’m okay with that as I’m cutting back on the stupid Marvel and DC superhero books that I buy on a weekly basis and I have the spare reading time to take it slowly with this one, and re-read the pages that initially confused. It’s enjoyable, but it does take some patience and concentration.

The basic story here is that superheroes are on strike and as is usual with strike situations their bosses are looking to bring in replacements. Some of the striking superheroes are starting to question their union boss, and probably thinking about going free-lance, for the same selfish reasons that exist in the real world, because it will be the best for them as individuals.

There’s some investigation going on as well involving COWL weapons going to villains, and that’s probably the most interesting part of the story to somebody like myself, because it suggests that the leaders of COWL might be creating their own enemy in order to justify their existence. This brings to mind how the FBI creates ‘terrorists’ by giving them fake bombs. It also brings to mind how the US and EU have been giving military support and weapons to Al Qaeda in Syria (now known as ISIS) in order to justify invading Syria in order to stop the very people they have created.

The other three plot-lines in this issue involve a disenfranchised second in command, a psychopathic pervert who is tolerated because he is useful, and a superhero doing a bit of work on the side whilst the strike goes on because she is a girl-scout type who just waits to take down the bad guys. If it sounds like there’s a lot going on here then it’s because there is. It might be packing a bit too much into the mix for some, but it’s okay with me, as I mentioned before I have the time and so I’m reading this one slowly, very slowly.

The book ends with things kicking off, as it should do in this issue, and we’re guaranteed some riotous action in next month’s end of arc instalment. It’s all set in 1962, which I don’t like, because it’s 2014 now and I don’t see any reason why comic book writers can’t be brave and deal with contemporary issue and concerns that are happening in the world right now. I lived through a period in the UK when unions had power. They thought the law, and the law won. We have been living with the legacy of that loss ever since. In 2014 unions have been decimated, and workers rights are not what they used to be. We are now living in an era of zero hours contracts, a form of slavery that would have been impossible for employers to get away with during the 1960's and 1970's when they still had some power. What is this book going to say? That unions were destroyed by globalism? That as soon as the jobs were ‘outsourced’ to China and the politicians no longer needed to keep workers on side it was all over for them? Why say that? We already know that, and putting superheroes into it doesn’t change anything.

If you want to talk about unions why not set it in 2014 where they are struggling to get their voices heard against politicians that no longer need to listen to them? That would be really interesting and relevant to the lives of the readers as well. This is an interesting book, but it’s out of date. The art is great, and the characters are very recognisably human and realistic, but it’s a book about workers rights set in an era before most of the readers were even born.

I go back to the point I previously made. What is it going to teach us? That we no longer have any power, that the strength of the unions were destroyed and we have become socialised, collectivised slaves to big government, a big government owned and controlled by the banks and corporations that helped destroy the unions by shipping the work over to China? Don’t tell us what we already know. Tell us what we can do to change the situation as it is today.

I like this book, it’s a good book, but it’s superheroes, strikes and the 1960’s. It’s good, but it’s old, and no matter how clever they are with the plot and the characters it will only reflect what happened decades ago, what we already know happened, not what is happening today and what needs to be done to change things. History is great, but I don’t need to be reminded that the workers were defeated over fifty years ago. I already know that. I’m living with that legacy today.

Rating: 7.5/10

Comic Book Review: Black Science #8- Anarchy and Science

Writer: Rick Remender
Artist: Matteo Scalera & Dean White
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 27th August 2014


Black Science is a book that I picked up mid-run for two reasons. Firstly, I didn’t have that many books to read this week, and secondly, I read the preview and it said something about ‘anarchism.’ Of course when ever people read ‘anarchism’ they get images of black face mask wearing goons chucking bricks through the windows of Starbucks, but you have to bear in mind that this image is about as far from anarchism as you can get. The black mask wearing goons are usually cops, or idiots paid by the cops to cause some chaos, thus giving the cops a reason to declare martial law and kick the crap out of all of those pesky, peaceful protestors who are concerned about banks raping and pillaging the planet.

Anarchism just means freedom from state control, or as it should be called, state imposed slavery. An anarchist wants people to live free from state-sanctioned coercion and the threat of imprisonment for the mere act of peaceful non-compliance, that’s all. You can see why the mainstream media demonises anarchists, can’t you? It’s simple. The anarchist wants freedom. The corporate whore mainstream media career obsessed journalist wants state-sanctioned slavery. I’ll discuss how this theme relates to the comic a bit later on in the review, but first off I want to briefly discuss the narrative core of the issue.

Black Science #8 has a very clever beginning with a first person narration helping the reader to build empathy for two children as they battle against weird alien creatures. The kids mouth the usual clichés about hitting back against bullies, but even though the message is verging on the cliché it’s still a good, positive thing to hear.

This action scene involving two apparently lost children fighting against a strange alien threat is duplicated at the end of the book. This means that the book begins with action and threat, and closes on action and threat. I like the technique as it gets the readers straight into the story and leaves them on a high as well. The middle section is not as exciting as the two sections with the kids, but I understand that this is a standard technique when writing comics. You begin and end with some action, and you put the slower, story/character based stuff in the middle.

This middle section consists of a team of ‘scientific anarchists’ having tense conversations before one of their previously taciturn members goes into narrative exposition mode, giving the readers a brief history of the strange device that they are all using. From what I can understand it’s an alien machine that causes more trouble than what it is worth. That’s where the ‘Black Science ‘ of the title comes from. This device appears to be alien technology that offers great benefits to those who possess it. The device offers huge technological advantages, but corruption inevitably follows.

This book is arguing that having high scientific technology in the hands of centralised human control systems is always a recipe for disaster.  Perhaps the only way to avoid disaster is to stop letting these centralised control systems exist in the first place? That’s where the idea of ‘anarchism’ comes into play.

This book is exploring what happens when a group of anarchist scientists get powerful technology that is usually only in the hands of the state. There is no such thing as an anarchist scientist who works for the state. These anarchist scientists must be working independently, free from state control. The question is, will they act any differently to the states that have always had this power in the past, or will human nature dictate that they act just as badly as their supposed opposites? I say ‘opposites’ because anarchists don’t use ‘Black Science’ technology to completely obliterate civilian populations, but states certainly do. The United States has done it twice quite recently, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Black Science is a comic book obviously put together by an experienced comic book professional. Rick Remender has been doing this for a while now, and for an issue mid-way through the story-arc it is very easy to follow. The art has a frenetic energy. It looks dirty and exciting, and although it took me a while to get to grips with the underlying themes of the narrative I think I have it now.

Some of the readers of this review might think that I’m projecting a lot of my own ideas into this book, making it into something that I want to read, rather than what is actually there. Perhaps you are right, but that’s what all good art does. It makes you think about the important things in your own life, and you take and consume it to fit your own needs. This book surprised me. It’s a grower, a book that made me think, and after a couple of reads, and a good amount of time digesting what I had read I’m very happy to recommend it to all readers of this review. Of course I now realise what I have to do next. I need to get those first seven issues, and get my thinking cap on. I want to know more about this group of anarchist scientists, their philosophies and their individual personalities. It’s going to be a real pleasure to go through those previous issues and discover the context behind what has happened in issue #8.  I’m so happy that I took a chance on what I thought would be just another silly comic book about evil anarchists. It’s not that, it’s a lot better book than that.

Rating: 9/10

Television Review: The new Doctor Who- Statist propaganda and a lesbian lizard kiss

Episode title: Deep Breath- Part 1

Episode date: Saturday 23rd August 2014

The last time I sat down to watch an episode of Dr Who was a Christmas special so loaded with anti-man, anti-family, climate change nonsense that it put me off the programme completely. That was a couple of years ago, but now I’m back. A new Doctor has taken the helm, and as he’s older than you might expect for the youth obsessed BBC, I thought he was at least worth checking out.

How is the BBC going to sell an old Doctor to their soft, liberally indoctrinated politically correct (mind controlled, and relatively young) audience? After all, with the feminist liberal brigade everything is about the surface appearance of things. You know how it works with this crowd, right? Everything is about race, gender, sexuality, and if you don’t accept a hairy bloke in a dress kissing his Trans-gender bi-whateverfriend then you’re a homophobic bigot who deserves to be publicly shunned, right?

Oh, a lesbian lizard, how very PC. 

What they’ve done here with this new Doctor is transfer their liberal, politically correct, you must be tolerant of every kind of perversion nonsense into an age thing. In other words, you have to accept the new Doctor as being old, and if you don’t accept him you are the equivalent of a racist, sexist homophobe. Perfect, but will it work?

It will be interesting to see how the new Doctor does with the indoctrinated liberal PC audience, because when it comes to backing up their circle jerk words with actions, well that’s a very different story. The liberal brigade might talk about being colour/race/gender/age/appearance blind, but they are obsessed with these issues. Liberals live to feel morally superior, so they see race, gender and sexuality everywhere that they look, hovering like a hawk to pounce on anybody that says something that might be misconstrued as being a bit racist/sexist/whatever. The age discrimination thing might guilt them into staying for the first few episodes of the new Doctor Who, but will they really be able to see past his appearance? It would be like expecting them to see past skin colour or sexuality, and I honestly don’t believe that they are capable of doing that.

The most politically incorrect people in the entire world are the politically correct people themselves. They might tell themselves that they’ll keep on watching this old Doctor, but will their words actually match their actions for a change? We’ll see.

Please accept me.

As for the plot of this first episode for the new Doctor, it was the usual BBC sell this crap to the foreign market kind of stuff. You know how it goes? Set in Victorian London, with Mary Poppins accents and cobbled streets and bobbies on the beat. All very cliché and safe to do, like an episode of Top Gear or Inspector Morse. English but not really English at all. Like the old Wild West in America, but updated for the current politically correct times where you have to promote homosexuality as the norm.

Here we go again then, on to the gay stuff. It took about five minutes before they were promoting lesbian marriage in this one, and it was all portrayed like it’s completely normal, of course. One of the main characters was a lesbian lizard and they found a good excuse for having her kiss her wife (Yes, they called her girlfriend her wife), explaining it as a transfer of oxygen when it was a full on, girl on girl kiss. A subtle, mind control tactic through the BBC programming, as let’s not forget, this is a show for children, and normalising homosexuality is one of the top priorities of the BBC these days. Why are they doing this? Because that’s what the elite’s want in their western colonies today, the promotion of homosexuality and the break-up of the family.

The BBC is a propaganda wing of the New World Order. Every single household in the UK is mandated to pay for BBC statist ‘programming,’ whether they want to watch the pro-slavery, anti-family propaganda or not. The BBC programming has been designed to brainwash the public, to keep them dumb, scared, ignorant and reliant on Big brother government. It pushes the agenda of the elite’s with a satanic, evil malevolence. That agenda is to reduce the population and have the family controlled by the state. Strong, independent, honourable family orientated men are the biggest threat to the modern fascist state. That is why men are invariably portrayed as stupid, silly or evil on all BBC programming.

This guy was the best thing about the show

As for the new Doctor himself. On this show he came across as silly, childlike, bumbling, confused and reliant on strong, masculine women to help him out of a very obvious trap. At the end of the episode he was seen as being directly responsible for the death of the villain, a half man, half robot creature that was threatening the lives of the general public. This Doctor Who character is a very obvious stand-in for the state, with his loyal army of women helping him out. He has power over life and death because he is only doing what is best for the people as a whole. He knows what is best, because he is the authority figure. He is the people’s hero, their representative, their protector, and their god. Doctor Who is the corporate state and his female followers are the corporate enforcers. Good, loyal little soldiers, social workers, lawyers, teachers, television presenters and everybody else involved in the modern day system of slavery known as democratic, representative government.

The show did have some moments that weren’t completely repellent to me. Some of the banter between the Doctor and his assistant was amusing in a chuckle, chuckle, look at how clever the script writer is, kind of way, even if there wasn’t much substance there. I recall a brief mention of vegetarianism in the restaurant, and how eating meat probably isn’t a good moral thing to do, but it was just a clever aside, and it didn’t play into the plot of the episode at all.

The show, at least to me, felt a bit too long and the accent of the Doctor himself was disconcertingly weird. Scottish, but a lived in London for too long, so losing it, kind of thing going on there. There was an alien butler creature that was probably there to make the kid’s laugh, but for me he was the best thing about the episode.

That’s it, there’s nothing else to say about the show really. It was your usual BBC bullshit, and I won’t be watching the next episode. I had to check it out though; you know how it is? Know your enemy, right? In conclusion, it was just another wilfully ignorant BBC show aimed at the foreign market. Its main concern was selling an older Doctor to its young audience, and it did this by telling them that they would be bad, politically incorrect people if they didn’t accept him.  It had the usual BBC message that we are helpless victims who need to be protected by a benevolent Doctor (the state) with his feminist liberal, politically correct helper women. That was to be expected, as was the homosexual agenda, but is that even worth commenting upon now?  The BBC has a role to play, and you know what you are getting if you waste your time on their programming. A hippopotamus dump of statist propaganda and a lesbian kiss for all of the watching children.

Rating: 3/10 (for the amusing alien butler)