[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. equal parts review and diatribe, the post highlights the most memorable/infuriating/entertaining book released that wednesday]

Spoilers Ahead. Forreal.

Admittedly, I’m not 100% comfortable with this week’s featured comic book. Most of the time, Images & Words showcases a comic that I could actually describe to another nerd. Yeah, the standard fare’s something along the lines of “In this book Superman fights the bad guys, saves Metropolis, and still manages to meet Lois for dinner.”

But this time around, I’m not quite sure what the hell is going on. I know that there is hilarious dialogue. The characters seem authentic and relatable. There are some bad ass fight scenes. And the art is just goddamn gorgeous.

So without knowing exactly what I’m getting into, the comic of the week is COWBOY NINJA VIKING #5!

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Jay: You’re fucking kidding me! The Easter bunny did this?
Brodie: All I said was that the Easter bunny at the Menlo Park mall was more convincing and he just jumped the railing and knocked me down.
Jay: He’s fucking dead!
Brodie: Oh let it go, he’s under a lot of pressure.
[T.S. and Gwen approach them]
T.S. Quint: What the hell happened?
Jay: The guy in the Easter bunny suit kicked his ass.
Brodie: I had it coming.
Jay: [to Silent Bob] Fuck all that shit. Come on, Silent Bob.

The sun rose again this morning. Bastard’s persistent, I’ll give him that much.

I got rocked last night. After detailing the wonder that is Bourbon County, I decided to keep drankin’ it. Ended up watching Metallica and Megadeth DVDs with my good chums Riff and Savadave. The combination of ethanol and shreddery launched me into a different mental dimension. I actually convinced Riff to drive me back to my house so that I could retrieve the leftover pizza. In my mind, I was an Italian Robin Hood. And no, I’m not Italian.

In any case, I crashed into my bed like Abin Sur, worried that I’d wake up to find myself reeling. Miraculously, I’m feeling like Hal Jordan! Will power!

I’m kicking back, making my way through some of the work I’ve determined to finish today. My eardrums are taking a bath in Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. And you’d better believe there’s some coffee in the mix.

How are you waking up?

I like going on a limb. I don’t do it often enough, but I really enjoy those moments when I dive in headfirst, not really thinking about what I’m about to get into. Sometimes, this goes terribly wrong and I fall on my face. But other times, it’s simply magic.

Tonight, it’s pure magic.

When I went to the beer store, I was instantly attracted to a certain naughty four-pack. He gave me a cat call and I couldn’t resist. Bourbon County seemed too good to be true — a commemorative stout aged in bourbon barrels. Oh, and not for nothing, but it’s produced by Goose Island, a brewery that has its shit together. Seriously.

I brought the four beers up to the counter. Handed them to the friendly booze dealer. And he, in turn, told me that I would be paying $21.37 for the small collection. Over twenty dollars for four beers?! Where the fuck are we, back in the USSR?!?! I muttered under my breath. This is an astronomical sum of money to pay for less than fifty ounces of beverage. But I wasn’t going to back down. Call it a sixth sense or just plain stupidity, but the newly revealed expense was appealing in a way. As though the maxim you get what you pay for might be true.

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On the first Good Friday, Jesus Christ was nailed to a cross. He went down. Epic-style.

But he’s spent the last one thousand, nine hundred and eighty years training. Rebuilding himself. Fashioning himself into a Eucharist-shootin’, rocket-boot flyin’ bad ass. He’s ready for a rematch.

I’ve got my money on Robo-Jesus.

[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. equal parts review and diatribe, the post highlights the most memorable/infuriating/entertaining book released that wednesday]

Spoilers Ahead. Forreal.

The second issue of Choker has hit stands and my nerd-tummy is churning and bubbling… With excitement! The first issue pushed the reader right into Shotgun City, the neo-slum that makes Blade Runner’s Los Angeles step back and say, “Hrm…Maybe I’m not so ugly. Let’s go buy jeans so the boys notice our butts!” Alongside, Detective Johnny Jackson, the reader is thrust into a search for Hunt Cassidy, the sociopathic drug dealer referred to as a prince among bastards.

As one would expect, the narrative continue to develop in this new installment. Jackson is still down on his luck, the bad guy is still at large, and Shotgun City is still a shithole. But we’re starting to get glimpses into the reality of the terror at hand, realizing just how worse for the wear the cast of characters are.

For instance…the black glove on Jackson’s left hand? It slips off while he’s sleeping to reveal a mangled, disgusting mess. A mangled, disgusting mess that grabs a gun and tries to shoot the hero until he can stab it with a sedative. Shit’s bizarre/I fucking loves it.

This second issue of the McCool/Templesmith collaboration also introduces a saucy female partner for Johnny Jackson. Her name is Kara Thrace. Whoops, my bad! I mean to say that her name is Walker. But really, if you’re familiar with BSG’s resident lady-badass, then you certainly know Walker. When we first meet Starbuck, she’s drinking space-booze and trading insults with the boys. When we meet Walker, she’s smoking a butt and telling another officer that she’d “rather be molested by clowns” than sleep with him. Starbuck asserts herself, punching Tigh in the mouth and proving that a man can’t keep her down. In place of fuzzy dice, Walker hangs her ex-husband’s nutsack from her rearview mirror. Oh, and they both have short blond hair, personality-defying good looks, and a sick jacket.

But don’t think I’m complaining. Because the fact is that sometimes using tried-and-true archetypes works. Walker is the tough-as-nails woman that Johnny Jackson is going to have to deal with. And, in a not uncommon twist, Walker is working for the slimeball that hired Jackson back in the first place. So we have to spend some time trying to figure out who exactly this femme fatale is going to play — her new partner, her corrupt boss, both of them? Again, standard crime story fare, but it’s working!

Once again, Templesmith’s art is the absolute fucking balls. His line art is top-notch, but it’s his work with tones and colors that elevate Choker to the plateau of visual ecstasy. As I read the comic, I find myself feeling as though I’m lost in some sort of bleak neon nightmare. There is a general gloominess afoot, and the occasional splashes of light are only used to sparingly highlight an impending horror. Take, as an example, the first splash, in which a pack of hillbilly cannibals reveal themselves from the shadows — only their ravenous, drooling faces receive full color.

In terms of visual structure, it’s worth noting that dark gray ink clouds often stretch themselves across the page. Effectively, this helps to blur the otherwise rigid divisions between panels. So while the paneled sequence remains clear to the reader, a subtle sense of narrative obfuscation is presented. Which is useful, considering that Choker is a crime-mystery, slowly revealing itself over the course of six issues.

I’m not exactly sure where Choker is leading. But I’m going to follow.

PS,

Warren Ellis — I want you to read this shit and look at the sexy art. And then I want you to take your beautiful, fish’n’chips snatching fingers and put them to a keyboard. And then, I want you to finish Fell.

EddieKim does it again. Picking up where he left off last week, this YouTube user takes a Billboard chart-topper and reworks it…into a demonic anthem of the undead!

While Rihanna’s Rude Boy was pretty brutal, this week’s reimagining of Lady Antebellum’s Need You Now is fucking catastrophic. This is the type of shit that plays while the Orcs come to pillage’n’rape.

Maybe it’s the fact that the lyrics lend themselves to doom-grunts. An excerpt;

It’s a quarter after one, I’m a little drunk and I need you now
Said I wouldn’t call but I lost all control and I need you now
And I don’t know how I can do without
I just need you now

Guess I’d rather hurt than feel nothin at all.

Once again, kudos to EddieKim! Keep up the good work!

In the last few weeks, I’ve turned the Friday Brew Review into a child’s birthday party. The normal group of friends, at the behest of the hosting mother, have been accompanied by those random kids from the third grade class that no one usually talks to. There was the poor kid who makes goofy faces when he thinks nobody’s looking. There was that kid who always brags about how his uncle works for Nintendo and hooked him up with an Ultra 64. And then there was that sweet little girl who always kisses every boy in class. Whore.

Party’s over, motherfuckers. Time to get back to the mainstays of the posse, the crewmembers who’ve proven their worth time and again. This week, I’m sippin’ on a stout.

Island Creek Oyster Stout, to be exact.

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Pulphope, holding in his hand the first one hundred pages of Battling Boy. I’ve been waiting for this book for a couple of years now, so to see such a tease pop up on his Flickr got me all sorts of hot’n’bothered.

The general premise of Battling Boy: the son of some sort of god/superhero has to come down from the mythical mountain to beat monster butt. Fairly simple story, with art to make the jaw-drop. The artist has hinted that this is going to be an unrestrained opus, with fight scenes taking up fifty pages at times.

Mr. Pope, feel free to bind those pages and send them to me via FedEx.

[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. equal parts review and diatribe, the post highlights the most memorable/infuriating/entertaining book released that wednesday]

Spoilers Ahead. Forreal.

In a strange way, I had hoped that Nemesis wouldn’t end up getting the Images & Words spotlight. The reality is that I’m a Mark Millar fanboy and so is Caffeine Powered. On top of that, we’re particularly fond of the writer’s collaborations with Steve McNiven, such as Civil War and Old Man Logan. With these comic book Mega Powers reuniting, we’ve been ranting and raving for months about how sick Nemesis is lining up to be. Which, to be completely candid, calls our objectivity into question.

Hell, the OL wad might’ve already been shot — there’ve been two posts about the comic before I could even get my grubby, powdered-sugar dusted hands on it. With this much hype, picking Nemesis as the week’s top comic seemed like a foregone conclusion. And I didn’t want to know which comic released on Wednesday was best before reading them. I wanted to sit down with my stack of funnies and say, “Let’s see who wows me!”

In fact, I even said, “Maybe Nemesis won’t even be that good. Maybe Millar’s played out. Maybe the new Streets of Gotham is going to rise to the occasion. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have acted a damn fool.

The first chapter of Nemesis is fucking awesome. As promised, Millar delivers an ultra-violent, wonderfully vulgar twist on the billionaire-superhero archetype. The reader gets to see what would happen if someone had all of the resources and ambition of Bruce Wayne, but not a single ounce of his altruism. Matt Anderson is the end product of replacing the philanthropic sentiments with sheer lunacy, and then stripping away every good intention so that they can be raped in the bathroom of an abandoned bowling alley. He is the Nemesis.

The titular character hunts for sport. But, as a maniac, he conducts his very own rendition of The Most Dangerous Game; he finds the best law enforcement officers in the world and then sends them a card that tells them exactly when they are going to be murdered. This game that Anderson plays is both incredibly cerebral and shockingly destructive. Not only does this predator toy with his prey, savoring the moments leading up to the killing stroke, but he makes sure to make a spectacle of the event as well.

In the opening sequence, Nemesis reminds a Japanese inspector of all the recent crimes he has failed to prevent. He then informs his target that the men coming to the rescue are on time, but two miles away — in a hotel that Nemesis has rigged with explosions. Then, in a grand twist, the inspector realizes that he is bound to a chair that is on a train track; not only is he killed by the oncoming transport, but the train derails as wreckage from the hotel bombing interferes with the train line. This is the undiluted, masterfully-executed plan of a homicidal genius.

Opposing Nemesis in this series is Blake Morrow, the thematic equivalent of Jim Gordon. The reader is introduced to the Washington D.C. Chief of Police as he shotgun blasts a bunch of crack-heads that have taken hostages in their attempt to hold up a convenience store. This dude is the archetypal old man bad ass, the aging dude who has paid his dues but still isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. Take for instance, this exchange with younger officers;

Officer: What the Hell? How’d you even get in here, Chief?

Morrow: Well, crack-heads tend not to count their hostages, son. I just wandered in the back door wearing a baseball cap.

Sergeant Lee: You are something else, boss. I had your job, I wouldn’t come near this shit.

Morrow: Language, please, Sergeant Lee. We’re supposed to be an example here.

Of course, Morrow isn’t one to piss his pants when he gets the death-sentence card from Nemesis. Instead, he remains calm and decides to put together a plan to take on the world’s only supervillian. Which is even more impressive when the reader realizes that this is an impossible task — to prove his dominance, Nemesis hijacks and crashes Air Force One. He then televises his challenge to Morrow, informing the public that “It’s time you hailed your new fucking Chief” as the President of the United States kneels before him beaten and whimpering.

Thus far, the most intriguing aspect of Nemesis is that I’m not sure who I’m rooting for yet. I’m not even sure if the reader is supposed to favor one character over another, as Millar introduces Matt Anderson as Player One and Blake Morrow as Player Two. Perhaps this is all just a game to sit back and enjoy, not worrying ourselves with getting too invested in either side. In effect, both players can be lauded for their respective supremacy.

Yes, Matt Anderson is a fucking lunatic whose atrocities would never be praised in reality. But this is comics. And moreover, the character has a swagger about him, exuding a confidence and fuck you attitude that most of us wish we had a little more of. And to top it all off, Millar intimates that Anderson has some sort of troubled past, as the character declares,

“Washington shall suffer just like Tokyo before it, but my new campaign has a personal touch. Call it revenge for a stolen childhood. The black sheep of the Anderson family has returned to burn these idiots who believe that you protect them.”

Even if you end up hating Matt Anderson, I have a feeling that you are going to love to hate him.

I genuinely think I could read Millar’s script and be on the edge of my seat. Fortunately, I don’t have to, as the mighty Steve McNiven rocks that shit out of this book. The highlights include three splash pages, two of which I foresee becoming requisite posters for every comics shop. Seriously, within the first issue McNiven’s visuals help convince the reader that Matt Anderson is a bad, bad man.

The only other note pertaining to the art is that I perceive a slight difference between Nemesis and McNiven’s other work. In this book, some of the art seems to have more lines. It’s not as sketchy as Leinil Yu’s art (which I adore), but keeps a sincerity that is sometimes inked right over. The art speaks as though it is proud of itself, and not as a comic that desperately wishes it were a movie or television show. Again, I know very little about formal art, so take that for what it’s worth.

Nemesis #1 is a sick book. You should read it if you like any of the following:

Superheroes

Supervillians

Explosions

Die Hard

Swear Words

Sick Art

Guns

Old Dudes Who Beat Ass

Condemnations of Society

Crack-Heads Getting Shot

Ultra-Violence

Cool Shit