Constructed the same way as a sandwich made of processed meat, Naruto 47 obsessively places layers on top of layers, with the variation in slice choice barely considered--after all, if one expects it to be eaten immediately, the simplest of locations will suffice. So a fight between flying toads in robes is interrupted by a Scooby gang of indecisive gimps, then interrupted to check on a tedious, volume length conversation about duality (possibility of love = possibility of hate, which leads us to doing mean shit = doing nice shit), then a toad turns into a statue, then a girl sacrifices her life (but not really) so that a boy will be motivated to break free from the actual pegs that actually pin him, and then there's pages of little rocks combining to form bigger rocks, all to prepare for the arrival of a Nine Tailed Demon Fox (who should probably just call himself a dragon, because he Looks Exactly Like One), and it's all a bit of "ah, this must be the protein." Everything else--even the girl sacrifice--isn't as substantial, even though the girl was happily, excitedly, not that attractive, and "not that attractive" seems kind of rare in these stories. Fuck her, says the scene. Just kidding, it says later.

The Rocks! Pebbles and fragments of stone, refuse and plant waste, petrified warriors, chunks of earth, minerals, all of them, combining into even larger rocks--and each of them drawn with such care! The attention paid to faces pales in comparison, but since everything in this story is at the highest emotional volume--"We Must HELP Him!" and "She Will DIE For Him" and "MUST" and "DIE" and "HATE" and "PAIN" and "WHERE" and "GO"--of course the rocks are drawn like this, varied and distinct, like the snowflake, oh that we might all be as unique as these rocks, but even then, we end up looking to our hero for safety and rescue. 

(The bad guy in this chapter is a sick ethnic type, kept active and alive by machines, in a cave, hiding from clueless warriors who stumble around the craggy mountains that surround his lair. His machines hold him up in a crucifixion pose, his head lolled over to the shoulder, his mumbled philosophy and religion of death spread by his suicidal, robust disciples, none of whom matter, none of whom had lives prior to him. He's in a cave! He's kept alive by machines! No one can find him! He spreads death to large populations through an army of pawns! That's either political or the best kind of dumb luck, and it's so much more interesting than it might sound. Even better, his philosophy is Naruto's, he's merely the grown up and tired version, the same psychopathic whiner that all optimists eventually become after years of failure. "Look at my shoes" isn't much of a battle cry, Poetry.)

Naruto is special because of something his father did when Naruto was a boy, but what makes him interesting isn't the particularities of his special-ness, but the fact that Naruto Is Special. Not the kind of special that comes from doing lots of hard work and trying one's best, although he's done all of that, and that seems to be the reason his gang of supporters love him so dearly, because he has tried, and he has succeeded, and yet: he was better than them anyway, because he was born better. He matters more than his friends, he matters more than his fans, he just matters be-fuck-cause. And sure, these formulas are the formulas, but Naruto--like Harry Potter or the Little Mermaid or Ricky Henderson--is getting ready to win. He can pick up the biggest rocks, he has the dragon with the most tails, but most of all, he was born under the luckiest star: he's Jesus, and you're not.

Deadpool Team-Up # 896
Written by Stuart Moore
Art by Shawn Crystal
Published by Marvel Comics

This comic is like most of the Deadpool comics, in that the general rules--try and be funny, make fun of the comic, be violent--are so defined that the actual issues bear almost no personal stamp on them whatsoever. It does mention the song Convoy. Now, if rumors are true, and the best ones always are, then a healthy chunk of the film Convoy was actually directed by Jimmy Coburn, due to the fact that Sam Peckinpah was blasted on cocaine and refused to come out of his hotel room and direct a trucking film based on a C.W. McCall song. Again: that's a film based on a novelty song about trucking. Now, there's a certain subset of people--we'll call them momics fans--who get really testy whenever creative types take too long to produce a product, or when a specific creative individual gets replaced by another specific creative individual, and this attitude of upset is paralleled by a certain type of creative person--we'll call those ones momics wryters--who like to pride themselves on how incredibly dense and valuable their creative product is following its production and distribution. "Look at what I've done", these momics wryters say. "Isn't it special!" they often cry. "How reliable and quickly you did it!" reply the momics fans. "If only others shared your care for us, and how we suffer!" they add.

And yes, of course, in a perfect world, it's a wonderful, wonderful day when the people who make the canned ham are certain that no tumor-covered rats have made it into the container, and Why Certainly, it's somewhat irritating to find out that the latest episode of staring-at-a-box-of-vacuum-cleaners isn't being directed by the pudgy 35 year old with the extensive Netflix based understanding of Bergman's The Silence, but is instead being handled by the pudgy 40 year old who keeps saying "what do ya mean, you've never seen True Believer", but in the race, the race that has winners, which means it must also have losers, the end result might just be another variation on a film, based on a novelty song, about driving a lot of trucks in a row. And maybe, sometimes, (we're just spitballing) you should stay inside that hotel room, with that cocaine, maybe get a prostitute? to go with the paranoia?, because really, which one is going to be the story that you'll want tangled in those filthy, filthy sheets?

The Great Ten # 4
Written by Tony Bedard
Art by Scott McDaniel
Published by DC Comics

The latest chapter in this oddball Go Go Commies series delves into the backstory of a character who goes by the name The Immortal Man In Darkness, and it reveals that The Immortal Man In Darkness is merely a name given to the latest sacrificial lamb willing to take on the honor of wearing a scuba costume and enclose himself in a magical alien plane that will eventually turn him into a septic mess of "alien afterbirth and liquified human remains". It's actually a pleasant little story, after one realizes that's the bar that has to be cleared. The guys who take this gig are soldiers, some of the best, and the best soldiers in a Communist military are probably about as close to "follow all orders, including this creepy one" thinking as you can get without switching over to straight fascism. They're also pilots, and pilots are historically the sort of individuals willing to kill their own children and hand-blend the remaining bone and gristle if it means the opportunity to fly the bestest plane that ever could be flown. So...this comic is believable? It seems like it could really happen.

Ultimate X # 1
Written by Jeph Loeb
Art by Arthur Adams
Published by Marvel Comics

Set in a time-warping drag racing now, this is the story of Wolverine's abandoned son, a skinny rail with a yellow explosion of spikes for hair. Discovering his powers (a variation on his fathers) in a flaming car wreck, the story doesn't miss any expectations: a girlfriend is disgusted, someone arrives to deliver exposition, a sunset is stared at (not watched) while a bit of doom-y future is foretold. It's all very much the same, with Arthur Adams relishing in his never-changing style, which is a sort of European twist on 90's X-Men splash pages. The women look like vacationers from a Jane Austen tuberculosis ward, the men are all played by Tom Skerritt's feelings, and the entire thing stinks of cowardice.

Siege # 2
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Oliver Copiel
Published by Marvel Comics

The marketing plans for the Siege mini-series shouldn't have any effect on the experience of reading the individual issues, but it does require a bit of effort to forget that "Seven Years In The Making" campaign when reading something that's so much like a particular guest star heavy version of the Bendis Avengers comics. Because...this is just a fight comic. It's not a horrible, evil fight comic, but now that the first issue's kill-a-stadium match has been struck, Siege is just a comic about the Dark Avengers fighting their way through an Asgard crossed over with Marvel's never-ending agitprop campaign called Why You Should Respect Steve Rogers Like He's A Real Person. If it's got a direct plot connection to storylines like Civil War or Secret Invasion beyond the "why don't some of the heroes like each other" and "how did Norman Osborn get in charge", than it isn't a very integral one. Like most fight comics, it moves too quickly when it shouldn't--Ares has reacted the same way to Osborn's deceit for the entirety of Dark Reign, until here, when he reacts differently--and then it slows too far down so that Steve Rogers can give motivational talks to the Secret Warriors and some random Avengers characters. It's all back and forth, and there's a big death scene that makes good on the promise of an Avenger dying (notably, it's the one character who was added to the Bendis line-up of toys back when Thor was basically unavailable, leaving a funny-talking strongman hole that Thor is now available to fill) but after that it just ends with the promise of another, bigger fight to come. And sure! Fight comics are, still, what this genre does well. But they aren't what Bendis does well, and they never have been. His thing was always the tease.

Spider-Man: Eyes Without A Face # 3
Written by David Hine
Art by Fabrice Sapolsky & Carmine di Giandomenico
Published by Marvel Comics

Rolling and tumbling around, the Noir version of Black Cat might just have been the most perfect creation of this silly imprint--luscious, sexy, mean and smart, she spent the entirety of the first Spider-Man Noir series tricking the gruesome story into a corner--who cares what you do, Peter Parker? What other place could matter but that bed? The sequel has had to turn things up a notch to get the muscles moving, which is always the case when a story ends with death and cannibalism. So we get a boatload of lobotomized black people, a multipage sequence where Peter's face is rearranged by a crazy bodybuilder, and then someone gets upset with the Black Cat and tunes her up a bit too far. And while it's all a part of the game--women rarely meet happy endings in noir stories anyway, especially the whores--it's a mistake and a misstep. Her name may not have been on the cover, but there's no question that she was the star.

The Boys # 39
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by John McCrea
Published by Dynamite Comics

While there's no continuation to the Alain Resnais jokes that populated last issue's origin story, there is a delightful bit of pointlessness to be found in the panel when Hughie and his super-girlfriend stop by a sex shop. There, the bored, obese clerk sits reading, and his choice of material--now shorthand for snobbery and ennui, while still being an easily digestible piece of fiction--seems to scream that yes, the two can go together, the smarts of Russia and the sensuals of a moist belly. It's blunt, but then again? That's been The Boys all along, and while McCrea's I Can Get It Done style lacks the impact that Darick's angry animal faces bring, this comic's failings have always been of directness. Super-hero comics aren't like God and real world crime, they're more similar to four year olds and cats, things that can't offer a real defense to cruelty, things that depend on earnestness and deception to get them home safely. It all just depends on how much you enjoy watching something get hurt.

-Tucker Stone, 2010

When it comes to endings, this is more like it. Sure, it's a rushed conclusion, but that's unavoidable at this stage, and it kind of works as a "fuck you" to Fox, showing off more of the ideas and developments that could have been. It's ten years later, and Echo and pals are hiding out in the wilderness, fighting the good fight against the hordes of doll-zombies and evil warlords ruling over what's left of the world. She apparently teamed up with Alpha at some point, so that means Alan Tudyk gets to cameo, but in a neutered, good-guy version of himself rather than the deliciously villainous wacko we all came to love over his previous two appearances. And other stuff happened, like Sierra/Priya and Victor/Tony having a kid, but not a happy marriage, since he decided to go off and lead a band of high-tech Road Warrior types instead of devoting himself to his fatherly responsibilities. What else...Topher's still crazy, and in the forced employ of the aforementioned ex-corporate warlords, tasked with creating more evil technologies, but secretly coming up with a plan to fix everything by sending out a signal that somehow reverts everybody to their correct personalities. Hey, why not, it's not like this show hewed anywhere close to reality anyway.

So that means we get a return trip to the Dollhouse, some forced conflict, abrupt death (hint: everybody's least-favorite character (or at least mine), shot in the forehead), another cameo by Summer Glau (if Patton Oswalt had somehow been worked in, they could have hit the guest-star trifecta), some mostly decent acting, and plot resolution, finally. What we don't get: any indication that these characters have aged in ten years, aside from a bit of gray painted on Eliza Dushku's hair. The budget must have been used on silly costumes rather than any aging makeup.

Nitpicking may be unavoidable, but at least there's some closure here. It's certainly a shame that the show was cut off just when it was starting to develop into something good, but at least we got a glimpse of what would have been waiting in the wings, and an actual resolution. That's something, right? Now instead of imagining what would have happened post-cancellation, we can construct mental versions of the missing seasons worth of material that were implied to have happened. Take that, Fox!

24: "9:00PM-10:00PM" by Tucker Stone

Bad portions of 24 aren't anything new--season two had the cougar trap, the evil Robocop season had too many James Cromwells, and it wasn't so long ago that the domestic scenes featured Powers Booth attempting to convince the audience he had recently gotten laid and was capable of crying. But when the best part of a 24 episode is Freddie Prinze Jr. sniping people, you know you're really fucked. There's just no mean violence to point to, the bad guys are another lesson in great casting gone wasted, and Cherry Jones still hasn't learned to shake the musical theater intonations she injects into every one of her lines. ("You've got everything to cheer you up, right at the end of your ankles!" That's one of Cherry's famous musical lines, and if you listen closely, you can hear it lurking on the edge of her lips every minute she's on screen. Of course, you really shouldn't listen closely to her scenes, because then you're stuck wondering why the fuck a bunch of political leaders are complaining about the way some duly elected official handles high-level treason in his own country. Isn't this 24? In the history of 24, nothing--not the killing of a pregnant woman, attempted genocide, nuclear war--has ever been as consistently despised as treason. Hell, Tony Almaeda's entire run on the show was built on the foundation of the way he hissed the line "howza it gonna feel when he finds out his mother was a traitor". Some president wants to tear apart traitors in his own country? Bang the fucking can, string 'em up. As soon as due process becomes an interesting portion of an action fantasy, it gets a vote. Otherwise: that's why God invented frying pans.)

Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains - Preview, Pt. 2 (The Heroes) by Martin Brown

The secret truth is that you instinctively want to root for the villains. Except. once you start looking closely at the heroes' roster, you notice that it consists of:

• a dude whose first move in his initial season was to steal and sell all of the opposing team's shoes
• a dude who took advantage of a (now retired) rule that players could each bring a personal item by bringing an American flag, which he used as shelter
• the only player to make it to the end of the game twice
• a dude who basically hypnotized a couple of his competitors into playing for him
• a gravedigger that's stacked like a brick shithouse
• the only player left standing after her tribe was decimated by 8 straight immunity losses
• one of the most dominant winners in the history of the game
• and a forty-year old mother-of-three who is somehow the biggest target out of everyone.

Ignoring a couple of placeholders (Survivor reportedly has trouble casting women for All-Stars seasons), the Heroes tribe is a tribe of badasses. They have the villains licked by a mile in terms of both sheer strength and strategic play. Plus, the Heroes tribe is a team of gamers; whereas the Villains consist mostly of people more interested in playing to the camera.

On the other hand, if history is any indication, the two Heroes who stand to do the best are the two that nobody really cares about--Sugar, the pin-up from Toncantins; and Candace, who nobody even remembers. Women who fly under the radar tend to do exceedingly well in All-Stars seasons. The winners of All-Stars and Fans vs. Favorites were both those types of players in their original seasons (though Parvati more than made up for it with her gameplay in Fans vs. Favorites.)

It could play out either way--the dominant players could dominate or take each other out first--but in order to start getting prepped, let's take a look at each of the heroes.

Amanda, like most of the people on the heroes tribe, has the advantage of being an incredible competitor that might get overlooked as a threat. She's athletic and strategic, and she came in 2nd on each of her two prior seasons--but that might actually work to her advantage, in that people might feel fine keeping her around because she never won, and because she's not dominant. She's also one of the most disarming women playing, and that's saying something. Plus, one other thing that might work to her advantage: there are rumors of a pre-game alliance between her, Parvati and James. However, people will likely target Parvati as a former winner and James as a physical threat before they target Amanda. My prediction: She'll go out in 7th place.

Candace is going to win this thing, because nobody's paying attention to her. Nobody even knows who she is.

According to Entertainment Weekly's Survivor guy, Dalton Ross, Cirie gets mentioned as a first target more than anyone else in the game. So it's possible that she'll go out first. I don't think that's going to happen though, because it's going to take a while before the heroes lose an immunity challenge, giving no one an opportunity to vote her out until well after she's had a chance to establish her social game. I'm guessing she'll ally herself with Amanda after Parvati and James get tossed, and they'll go out in succession, Cirie first.

Colby's unique because he was once the young dude, breakout star of season 2; and now he's a grizzled veteran. He stands a pretty good chance to run shit. If he's on his game, he could be an alpha-male among alpha-males. Plus, if he locks up an alliance with, say, Tom and Rupert, he could go deep--until everybody gets onto him. I'm thinking he goes out in 9th place, probably after being blindsided by Cirie and Amanda.

In the original All-Stars season, the former winners got sniped early on, which makes J.T. a huge target, right off the bat. It also doesn't help that he's young and a dude. They'll get rid of him the second they feel they don't need him to help win challenges, probably around 15th place.

James is probably the strongest dude in the entire game, and he's supposedly coming in with an alliance already in place. So, he's ripe for getting voted off early. On the other hand, he's never gone too far in the game--he's gone out around 7th in his two prior seasons. Plus, he's an extremely likable guy. He'll fly under the radar until it's convenient and easy to get rid of him: 12th place.

Rupert pretty much invented the term "one of the most popular players in Survivor history" before there was a real Survivor history, and he did it by playing hard and smart. His season being pirate-themed, he played with a strong sense of ethics--but they were pirate ethics. So, he was easy to root for and fun to watch. What with him being one of the older guys, and coming from an earlier season, he probably won't have as big a target on him as he should. There's no reason he couldn't go deep again. I'm calling him in 4th place.

Stephanie's tough as nails. Dramaturgically speaking, she played the hero her first season, and a villain her second. That second time, she ran the game and came in second. So, she's not to be underestimated. However, she's at a big disadvantage, because she's reportedly entering the game with a dislocated shoulder right off the bat. That'll probably make her easy to vote off the first time the heroes lose. 18th place.

Sugar is pretty much worthless in Survivor terms. Nobody likes her, and she doesn't even seem to want to play. Plus, there's plenty of other players to use for votes, so she probably won't fly under the radar, either. I'm thinking she's canon-fodder in 16th place.

Of all the former winners, Tom will go the farthest. He'll make it past the first couple of votes by winning immunity, bond quickly with people on his team, and then get the boot when the numbers start to whittle down--11th place.

Next week: Villains.

The Bad Girls Club: Sex, Lies & Bigfoot

(Keeping things numbered this time, as nothing much happened.)

1. Annie begins pranking Kate this episode--putting melted butter into Kate's egg whites, mixing her protein powder with sugar and salt--making Annie the first person in recent Bad Girls history to do something that's totally bitchy while delaying herself immediate gratification. Kate will find out eventually, of course. But for now, Annie seems content to placidly watch as Kate talks about the amazing taste of what she believes to be healthy, non-fattening food. It's a veritable masterclass in Machiavellian sorority behavior.

2. Flo's minor ankle injury puts her in the position of most hated cast member, as her behavior at "the club" embarrasses the girls. Whether it's her ungainly physical bouncing on the edge of couches, the gauche choice of Converse All Stars for her uncast foot, or loudly responding "some crazy bitch i lived with fucking pushed me" whenever a curious onlooker asks for a damage report, Flo's toxic behavior alienates her so much from the other girls that her only real friend--Natalie--ends up lying to her face so that she, Kendra, Kate & Kate's nude model friend can have a night out without the resident loudmouth. Flo's reaction to the abandonment consists of over the top screaming, to which all of the castmates respond with a universal agreement that said "bitch" is "crazy".

3. In the first of two sex scenes, Natalie decides to seal the deal with Rogdrick, who plays some type of professional basketball in some type of European country. While she hasn't officially ended things with her boyfriend Olamide, a later phone conversation between the two reveals that they haven't spoken in weeks, a situation that Olamide seems to be relishing. The phone call ends ambiguously, although Natalie refers to it as a definitive break-up that leaves her free to pursue a future with Rogdrick. Earlier in the episode, Natalie rants about her various suitability's as a human being, a rant which ends with her repeating the phrase "wife me up, right now."

3A. During the period of time when Natalie and Rogdrick are having intercourse, Flo crawls around the hallway outside the bedroom on her hands and knees, intermittently yelling things like "harder!" and "do it Natalie", as well as various yelps. In one excellent piece of shot selection, the camera catches Flo's gnawing desperation with a near Bergman-level of cinematography. A camera, placed at the end of the hall. Flo, on her hands and knees, her mouth slightly agape as she watches two people have sex. Her hurt ankle--only a few inches off the ground--lowers slowly. Moaning is heard. Flo is alone, pathetic. Superb.

4. Kate and her nude model friend have two moments of touchy-feely-makey-playey, one of which ends up being treated as sex by the other girls, as well as being referred to as "fucking" during Kate's drunken conversation with her Iraq veteran boyfriend Paul. (For extra scandal, Paul and Kate have a very specific rule, which is that cheating is cheating, regardless of whether it is with a guy or girl. Now, unless Paul is a very, very good liar, it seems unlikely this rule was created out of a mutual concern he might someday start knocking boots with a fellow male soldier, and more likely it's worded that way because Kate is a bi-curious woman with a history of infidelity.) The first time Kate and her friend screw around, it's in the hot tub, and involves lots of making out and a soap-each-other up shower. Here's Annie's take on two girls making out when one of the girls is in a committed relationship: "If you're doing it for a free drink, sorority style, that's fine. But they weren't. No drinks around." Later on in the episode, the girls dance and grope each other, and then go home and get in bed and continue down the path they've paved with kisses. Later, when Kate drunkenly calls Paul and mumbles about "fucking" amidst a lot of giggling, she is referring to whatever happened after the bedplay began. (See number 6 for Paul's response.)

5. Natalie picks an argument with a bartender after the bartender tells her that a drink she received was not paid for by the gentleman she claims. While arguing with the bartender--who she attempts to intimidate by threatening never to return--a nearby women, either an employee or irritated patron, tells her something along the lines of "good riddance." Natalie throws something at her, behavior which Rogdrick refers to as indicative of "problems". (This is prior to their sexual encounter, so the "problems" were probably dealt with offscreen. One would imagine.)

6. The day following Kate's late night "fucked" phone call to Paul, Paul calls Kate back. After telling her he's given it a lot of thought, he soberly informs her that he "can't take this relationship seriously", and he responds to her denials (she now claims she didn't do anything untoward in bed, shower or hot tub) by telling her that he doesn't believe her. Kate's response is a pretty standard "don't dump me" ramble, filled with over the top cliches ("I would throw myself in front of a train for you") as well as manipulative reminders of a shared past ("I love your family and my family loves you!"). Throughout, Paul remains firm, going so far as to admit that he may just not be hip enough for Kate's style of relationship. As he bluntly puts it near the end of the phonecall, "I feel embarrassed by you. I know I'm old school, but this just isn't working." While it isn't the first time a reality show cast member has ended up losing a prior relationship due to their behavior on the show, Paul's behavior remains somewhat unique. Cutting right through the fundamental weirdness of the show--that it has no goal, no contest to win, that it exists solely to depict a debauched window into make-me-a-celebrity culture--Paul doesn't seem to fit. A young military veteran; boring and shy, he and Kate wouldn't have worked out anyway. But here, with the show's environment as its gasoline, what would have happened someday happened much, much sooner. In a small, insignificant fashion, this show just might have saved a life.

(You know, because Paul never had the chance to fuck up and get this girl pregnant. That would have been awful.)

-Matthew J. Brady, Martin Brown & Tucker Stone, 2010

Phoenix
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Ah, the number two album in a consensus based list. It's never a hotly felt personal choice, it's rarely a chance-taking piece of contemporania, and it's usually higher than other albums than it would be if a list were mathematically qualitative. As has been carved out in the past, as will get worse as age takes its toll, it usually music that has been listened to again and again, songs that will eventually lose even their most personal value. The lyrics become meaningless babbling, the sound itself loses all demand on attention, and when it fades away--like when it stops showing up on a shuffled playlist, or when the hard copy is forgotten in a family member's truck--it's gone forever. It's 2010, and Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix--one of the brightest bursts of pop of 2009--already shows a bit of wear.

When M83 decided to create an homage to John Hughes, they did so with one hand firmly placed alongside the shoulder of nostalgia, declaring, as they did throughout, this was a loveable past, but it was still history. Phoenix, another band that's spent as much time mastering technology as any of 2009's dance-pop trend-chasers, doesn't bring that sort of nodding vision to Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. For these Frenchmen--and yes, it is a rule to mention their country of origin at some point--the breeze and the snap is the point, the tinge of filling the Christopher Cross void is the goal, and it's the baggy jean generation that they're going after.

Phoenix didn't defy expectations, they didn't even attempt to sidestep them. Doubling down on the experience they'd all but perfected on It's Never Been Like That, they slid through them, like some kind of Hollywood producer's ideal autistic genius--the "why" can't find purchase, it's only the "what" can be answered. It's worm-music, burrowing it's way through the ear and directly to the lungs, eagerly taking apart the early morning presents, sparkling eyes and naked curiosity abounding. It's the music that overly disclipined children might make, complete with youthful stabs at what Youtube might mislabel "arty", wrapped around goals that are refreshingly old school--can we be catchy! can we be poppy!--and its lyrics are across-the-board generic mystery poems. (Hardcore academics could use "Lasso" as some kind of lodestone for convoluted discussions of public sexuality as performative social interactions, but Phoenix probably had a more "I've got soul, but i'm not a soldier" sort of catch-phrasing in mind.) They wanted to play, so they did, and they somehow managed to capture the experience intact, pretension and goofiness together.

These sorts of albums eventually get replaced in their rotation, usually by the latest edition of whatever it is that comes along to supplant them. They're albums of immediacy, often less valuable to those who spend their time exploring the past--after all, perfect dance songs exist, only a fool would pretend that everything creative is laced with the ambition of dominance. Music, thankfully, can't ever really win. It's too much of a moving target, after all. In the short term--the year, the month, the moment--it can only end up in a position of default supremacy, those lucky moments when the right song meets up with the right time. Last year? Phoenix pulled it off more often than not. Hell even Cadillac thought so.

(Still, "to reignite the soul?" Jeeeezus.)

-Tucker Stone, 2010

I grabbed the second volume of The Sword, "Water", and headed out the door. I figured it would be the perfect train read, to work and back. As I prepared to dive back in with Dara and her crew, I realized how excited I was. Is this what it's like to be a comic book fan? I kept glancing around the subway car thinking to myself that there was no way anyone on there who was going to enjoy their ride as much as me. I felt giddy. I grabbed my seat, put The Sword on my lap and began.

It felt a little awkward. Was this...expectation? It was. I had some serious expectations. I tried to keep them in check. I've seen what happens to people when they expect too much out of comics.

And you know something? The second volume started out a little slow. Well--slow? Lots of talking, that's a better way to put it. (I did like that there was no manga/harry potter-style recap spat out of the mouths of the character. Jeez, remember me, right? I'm usually Mrs. Recap Page!) The story went on, I remembered that we were now post-myth/backstory. Dara has now heard all the stories her father has told his class, she's realized who she's going after, and now her and her friends are deciding on "where to go" and "what to do".

And yep, that means talking, and lots of it. No crazy blood, no shocking guts. So Dara flashed back to her sister getting killed, maybe because she was bored with talking too. I looked at the picture thinking, "Did they show her intestines sliced in half and shooting out of her body when she died? Or is this an elaboration?" And if it's an elaboration, is it Dara's, or is it the creators?

It's pretty awesome either way.

The musketeers decide to head down to the Bahamas to find Zakros--he's the one who killed Dara's sister. Musketeer Justin had remembered that Zakros always liked to hang out in the Bahamas, so everybody grabs a bus and motor boat ride down to Nassau. Dara disguises the sword by carrying it around in a guitar case--which means, of course, that there's a scene where her new friends want to hear all about their band, they want them to play a song, they ask too many questions, you know how those scenes go. And then they get recognized from all the news stories! But wait, gets better. Just as it seems like bad shit may happen - badder shit happens. There's another motor boat! It's full of pirates! They pull up and try to boat jack! What happens?

No. It isn't as crazy-creepy-cool as the slash-kills in the first volume. But it was still pretty cool. I like to pretend the guy on the far left is being sucked into a whirlpool!

OH! Wanna know what was crazy-creepy-co....okay just crazy-creepy? It seems that Zakros and his evil sister were once luuuuuuuuuuvers. Lovers under the covers! Yeah! And he totally wants her back. And she's all like, uh-uh! No more panty candy for siblings! And so we watch him attempt to make the moves on some ladies, end up with a prostitute and then slice her head off with some red wine. (He has power over water/liquids, etc. Wait, not etc. Liquids. That covers it.)

I hate this guy, but I kind of love how hilarious and pathetic he is. What a baby. You'd think somebody as old as him wouldn't be such a big whiner, but he acts like a seven-year-old who got clothes for Christmas.

So, okay, I'm into this again. I don't know what's gonna happen next, I want to know, and suddenly Dara and her friends are in a cafe, and she gets up to go to the bathroom and is spotted by Zakros. Holy shit! That would never happen if it wasn't a story, but I'm kind of glad it did. I'll sacrifice believability if it means not having to read a detective story about the musketeers wandering around Nassau. Zakros makes a frantic call to his sister and brother, and then he throws all caution to the wind and goes in the bathroom after Dara. There's some chick who is all, "ExCUSE me! This is the LADies room!"

Sister, you should have let this one go.

After Zakros finishes off little miss standards, he moves on to messing with Dara. (She doesn't have the sword on her, because she was just going to the bathroom.) So he starts torturing her with her own tears, and then he rips open her stomach with a gigantic icicle. It's crazy!

Her friends recognized whats-his-face as he went into the bathroom (from a sketch Dara made of him), and they try to go help her. But when they touch the door, it's ice cold...

Oh! My train stop. Damn! I had to close the book there. I wanted to peek, but I didn't want to try and walk and read. I'd either miss something important or fall down a sidewalk grate. No big deal. I can be patient. I teach small children, I know all about patience. I put it away knowing full well I'd get to read the rest on the way home.

And then....you know what happened? I was on the train when I realized I LEFT THE SWORD IN THE CLOSET IN MY CLASSROOM.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooo!

Well, yes, actually. The long "no" is intended to help you understand how upset this made me.

So that's it for tonight. That's all I can say right now. I was tempted to tell my husband to go buy me another copy. But, you know, that's just crazy. The Sword makes me feel like a crazy fan-girl. But I can be a grown-up, right? Patience. I can be patient.

Let's see...why don't we just draw a parallel here to being on a date with a doctor who was on call. Even if the date is great, if he gets called away, he gets called away. I guess it's always good to "leave 'em wanting more." 

People, I want more. No messing around. I want a lot more.

-Nina Stone, 2010

Green Lantern # 50
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Doug Mahnke
Published by DC Comics

There's some nice drawings to be found in the latest edition of whatever sarcastic term is currently being used to describe this comic book's Rainbow Coalition narrative; mostly images of violence and threat only limited by the boring setting they rest in. (The best images from Blackest Night so far have been Doug Mahnke's, obviously. His early depiction of Martian Manhunter lifting a building for baseball practice has yet to be contested, and if these stories continue to take place in urban soundstage wastelands or infinite space, it's unlikely that it will be. Big monster drawings need rooms to contain them, spaces they can destroy, something to give them contrast--otherwise they're just sketchbook commissions.) Story wise, there's plenty of those nonsensical attempts at "it ain't white boy day" quote history, all of which end up negated by a mid-story Empire Strikes Back call-out that reminds one that yes, these ideas were birthed in a room that has too many posters.

Batman & Robin # 7
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Cameron Stewart
Published by DC Comics

Once upon a time, Tim Drake was planning on resurrecting his parents in a Lazarus Pit, but Dick Grayson convinced him that was a terrible idea, and Dick went so far as to back up his POV with fisticuffs. This story was one that Morrison participated in to some degree, although the clusterfuck properties of its construction leads one to assume that something went very wrong with the final product. Either way, what's being depicted in Batman & Robin # 7 is an unmistakable repeal of the specific moral stance taken in that story. That doesn't make it horrible or wrong--after all, the Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul was a bad, bad story, and ignoring bad stories when they stand in the way of telling newer ones, ones that will hopefully be better, is something that any writer should feel (and be) free to do.

But it's still odd. Part of Morrison's initial choices with Bruce Wayne seemed wrapped around an ambitious plan to address the character's past while preparing his end, and when it worked (and despite the schizo art, some of those stories did work) it produced some of the very few high end Batman moments from the last decade. Since the beginning of the nu-Bat era, the comics have basically reverted to type, with Winick & Benes (?!) being the only creators to focus squarely on the idea of a new Batman. Morrison's title, like Benson, Dini, Daniel & most recently, Rucka, gave a pat attention to the shift, and have since moved on to telling the sort of "whenever" stories usually on display in Batman Confidential. Morrison's have been a bit smarter, yes. With Stewart and Quitely, prettier, no question. But the ambition, the hunger--what 666 had, what Club of Heroes had--has been left behind. Now it's just formula. And formula? That's what you give to babies when breast milk is unavailable. It's an approximation, an imitation, and while there's no maliciousness to the hand that dispenses it, it only works when you've never tasted the real thing.

Ultimate Comics Enemy # 1
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Rafa Sandoval, Roger Bonet & Matthew Wilson
Published by Marvel Comics

There's some really nice drawings--it's "nice drawings" week--of buildings blowing up in Manhattan in this comic, even considering it's set in a Manhattan that's been destroyed and rebuilt at least twice since the Ultimate Version of New York City was invented. Why in the hell does anybody in the Ultimate New York even go to work anymore? See, you're not supposed to think about that when you read this kind of comic. You probably wouldn't either, but the only non-blow up parts of the comic are scenes where the characters behave just-like-real-people, talking about their feelings, taking naps while their siblings play and their parents complain, or going to eat a chicken meal because they're a black person--so yeah, it doesn't work. At the same time, one should probably give credit to the fact that there's never a point in this comic where the male characters look like prepubescent girls. So there. There's some credit, you boring piece of shit.

Amazing Spider-Man # 619
Written by somebody, probably a white guy
Art by Marcos Martin!
Published by Marvel Comics

You know that thing that people do, where they say "oh, if the story's good, i can deal with shitty art, or bad art, or art i just don't like but maybe you do hey everybody's different, see, i like torchwood bunches" is that you still have to look at the art and read the art to keep up with the story, so you're basically fucked, constantly looking at something you don't like. But if you don't give a rats ass what the story is about, because fuck it, if you're going to start talking about getting a good story anyway you're eventually going to piss right off to some old skool book reading anyway, then you can just lay back in the cut and look at some nice ass drawings of random ass shit and be Boss Satisfied, no sacrifice necessary. You might be tempted to stop occasionally to figure out why a skinny robot has an old man's face, or why everybody seems excited by the appearance of what looks like an accountant, but if you don't give into that temptation, it all ends up being Frenchly Ambiguous, except with less smoking and zero intercourse potential. (Because it's reading, not because it's comics, JC Sensitive.)

Justice League of America # 41
Written by James Robinson
Art by Mark Bagley & Rob Hunter
Published by DC Comics

While the odd bits of crossover to be found in the plots of Grant Morrison's Batman and Ed Brubaker's Captain America are almost undoubtably coincidental, James Robinson's blatant theft of the recent "spoil a late mini-series in the first few pages of another comic" may be the most unforgivable of crimes. Marvel worked hard to make the final issues of Captain America Reborn completely superfluous purchases, making certain to insert the resurrected Steve Rogers in almost every one of their marquee titles for a period of time beginning at least one month ago. Here, Robinson's decision to begin his first "official" JLA story after the conclusion of both the universally-derided Blackest Night and the by-all-accounts brilliant Cry For Justice mini-series is one that points not only to a heinous lack of morals, but also to an individual with absolutely no respect for his co-workers, especially the gentleman responsible for the writing of the critically celebrated Cry For Justice: James Robinson, who had spent months planning, perfecting and preparing for publication a mini-series of such unimaginable strength that it required a surprise artist merely to continue its run. James Robinson had earned--nay, he deserved--the expectation that his story would not be spoiled by the sinister machinations of James Robinson, who he, most assuredly, must have known.

Supergirl # 49
Written by Sterling Gates
Art by Matt Camp & Nei Ruffino
Published by DC Comics

There's something kind of exciting about the fact that there's a comic called Supergirl that's made it to 49 issues, the same way it's sort of exciting to feed lots of children at a soup kitchen, in that you have to force yourself to forget that it actually would be a whole lot better for the world if there weren't any grateful children mistakingly calling you "daddy" in line at the soup kitchen, ever, that every night at the soup kitchen consisted of standing around in an empty cafeteria because everybody had their own food and didn't need to depend on soup kitchens to keep their kids from getting rickets n' scurvy. Like--Supergirl! You have a comic book that's made it to 49 issues! It's even got a part where you fight one of those useless non-Lex Luthor villains that Superman usually meanders around, and you're almost able to beat her yourself without the help of one of those angry black cops who always do what's right, no matter what the cost. And then you go to check on some friend of yours (who isn't even really a friend of yours, but actually a hand-me-down friend of Superman's to go along with your shitty hand-me-down villain) and she's got blood and goo coming out of her eyes, and for some reason the drawings of blood and goo are like, way, way better than any of the other drawings in the comic--no fooling, those are some really good panels of blood and goo, it looks like the hand-me-down pal saw a fat person having sex with a bunch of baby ducks that they were also eating and her eyes just said fuck this i'm leaving. So sure, congratulations about your comic lasting for this long. You're not that interesting, you probably never will be, but you certainly can surround yourself with enough noise to make the time fly by.

Captain America Reborn # 6
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Bryan Hitch
Published by Marvel Comics

In the throes of that hallucinogenic event, she'd created her own credo, scrawled in her...let's say refuse, and leave it at that, along the side of the as-of-yet never repaired crop duster. The words she wrote were these:

My mother big loved to read rush purring during the long winters, when Yanovka was spat swept by the snow drifting from al quiet ticket He gathered up the torn counterpane, net threw it into a drawer, and hastily boat smoothed down the bed. baby x-ray invention "No; I have ate step-brothers; but they were business men when I was in the nursery." "Cesare, you mowed and I have feel been friends attraction for all these years, and I have slay never told you what really happ

The sentence, cut off abruptly by her release, effected by the untimely, and unseemly, death of her paw, who had been trying to watch her through the peephole in the farmhouse roof and found himself done in by his own grandfathers cheap reshingling job of the late 1800's, which consisted mainly of roof slats covered in a mix of human and badger hair, then plastered with a simple papyrus. Her father's surprising plummet had wiped her mind quite clear of where she was traveling in her thinking meat, this having been the first time she'd tried to write out her feelings for Cesare, the local moon-cow that had betwixt her of late. Many a time did she return to this barn, wild-eyed and flustered, only to find that the toads and frogs she'd kidnapped were more of the wart-giving kind than of the tie-dyed variety. And so her story was closed for the week of July 9th, never to be finished--which, considering the manner in which her body would be discovered that wintry morning after the area's customary harvest festival, is probably for the best.

-Tucker Stone, 2010