Saturday, May 23, 2009

The Dissector #116.

DISCLAIMER (angry creators, please read)

[[WARNING! THIS COLUMN MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS!]]

04-01: "Trust me--The Age Of Stryfe pretty much makes The Age Of Apocalypse look like The Age Of Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm." Deadpool, Cable V2 #13.

04-08: "This room looks like I think." Rag Doll, Secret Six V3 #8.

04-15: "Fucking rabbit shit. All that bloating and production for four fucking pellets." Lightning Bowman, Ignition City #1.

04-22: "I'm a time-traveler standing on a burning planet that's falling into a hole in space while talking to a sorcerer. At this point I believe in everything." Major Victory, Guardians Of The Galaxy V2 #13

04-29: "I'm Charles Fort. My partner here is Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Unusual facts find me and unusual... THINGS find him." Charles Fort, Atomic Robo And The Shadow From Beyond Time #1.

Atomic Robo is so full of win... like I said before, it's the heir to Hellboy's crown in the weird adventure realm... more on the weird science side of the road than the weird occult side; but still. This is the column for all books in the month of April, and part of my ongoing effort in catching up.

Last column's DT! was spotted by DrSilent, who correctly pointed out that Longshot has four fingers and one thumb, instead of three of the former and one of the latter. DrSilent, badge for you, three more and you make Lt. Cmdr.

Now, The Dissector's Picks for each Week. Week of 04/01, Best Book was the Marvel Assistant-Sized Spectacular #1; a good anthology of short stories; while the Worst Book was Teen Titans V3 #69... it hasn't lived up to expectations lately, and this issue was just plain bad. Best Book for the week of 04/08 was Dark Reign: Hawkeye... nothing special, but some nice psycho fun with Bulls/Hawk/eye. Worst Book for that week was Titans V2 #12... the art in this book is not cutting it, and the story's nothing out of the ordinary.

Best Book for the week of 04/15 was, as it is often, The Amazing Spider-Man V1 #591... that book is just S.O.L.I.D.; and Worst Book was Star Wars: The Clone Wars #5... which is just B.L.A.N.D., a waste of paper and ink. Week of 04/22 has Kick Ass #6 as Best Book, and Hulk V3 #11 as the Worst Book. Hulk would SMASH if he read his own comic...

Lastly, week of 04/29's Best Book was, unsurprisingly, Atomic Robo And The Shadow From Beyond Time #1... I mean, Robo, Charles Fort, HP Lovecraft, Tunguska... the only thing missing here is Nikola Tesla himself!!! Worst Book for that week was, out of the blue, Ms. Marvel V2 #38... a crappy story about why the Dark Avengers Ms. Marvel (aka Moonstone, aka etc) is so evil and crap...

Since this is a catch up column for a whole month of books, lots of books got dissected, but get no write ups, namely: Angel, Angel: Blood And Trenches, Astonishing Tales V2, Avengers/Invaders, Batman Confidential, Cable V2, Captain America Theater Of War, Captain America Comics, Dark Reign: The Cabal, Final Crisis: Legion Of Three Worlds, Flash: Rebirth, G.I. Joe: Cobra, Hellblazer, Justice League Of America V2, Seaguy: The Slaves Of Mickey Eye, Star Trek: Mission's End, Superman/Batman, Superman: World Of New Krypton, The Authority V4, Titans V2, Trinity, Uncanny X-Men, Vigilante V3, Wolverine: Origin Of An X-Man, and Wolverine: The Anniversary. Now, dissections!
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"BILBO COBBLEPOT"

TITLE: Batman-Battle For The Cowl: The Underground (DC).

ISSUE: One-shot.

CULPRIT: Pablo Raimondi (artist)

DISSECTION: Yes, we know Penguin is supposed to be short, but he's not a damn hobbit!!!

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars. Also, as usual, Riddler's eyes and hair are colored incorrectly.
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"EX LIBRIS."

TITLE: Battlestar Galactica: Cylon War (Dynamite).

ISSUE: 04 of 04.

CULPRIT: Joshua Ortega & Eric Nylund (writers).

DISSECTION: The colony is called "Libran", not "Libris"... despite the latter name being incorrectly used in issue 3 of the now-defunct Battlestar Galactica: The Official Magazine.

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars. Also, the word "Agreed" is missing the first letter in a sentence.
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"ANDROID: ADJ. POSSESSING HUMAN FEATURES. N. AN AUTOMATON IN THE FORM OF A HUMAN BEING."

TITLE: Booster Gold V2 (DC).

ISSUE: 19.

CULPRIT: Dan Jurgens (writer).

DISSECTION: Goldstar calls Skeets an "android"... she's from the 25th century, that's like someone today calling a motorbike a truck... Michelle 's not an idiot, and even under distress, you don't call a bike a truck, no matter what.

DISSECT-O-METER: 6 Bazzars. Jurgens had another character refer to Skeets as an android last issue; so this gets a higher rating than it normally would. You know what? Fuck it, Jurgens has twenty-five years of experience in the comic book industry, particularly in superhero comics, which are undeniably related to scifi, and he still doesn't know the definition of the word "android"? This gets 8 Bazzars now!
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"AS THE YEARS GO V-I."

TITLE: The Dissector (Studio Robota).

ISSUE: 115 and several previous issues spanning back to 2007.

CULPRIT: MaGnUs (writer).

DISSECTION: Snakebyte correctly noticed that last column I labeled X-Factor as V4, when it's V3. Even though he gets a badge, I'm disappointed, I expected better of him... last time I labeled it correctly was in 2007...

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars, just for the continuous error.
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"I AM MAGNETO, NOT SOME PUNK!"

TITLE: Dr. Doom And The Masters Of Evil (Marvel).

ISSUE: 04 of 06.

CULPRIT: Paul Tobin (writer).

DISSECTION: Okay, I've hated this particular plot device for AGES, yet I'd never actually seen it in a comic book, at least not since I started writing The Dissector (I've seen it in cartoons, too): Magneto is not helpless before plastic sentinels, or sentinels programmed specifically to combat him: HE JUST MAGNETIZES STUFF AROUND HIM, LIKE VEHICLES, BUILDINGS, BOULDER-SIZED CHUNKS OF GROUND AND SMASHES THEM AGAINST THE FUCKIGN ROBOTS!!! For God's sake, the man controls one of the fundamental forces of the UNIVERSE!!!

Random Bigot: Now you will fall, Magneto! You are facing my new plastic/ceramic/anti-magnetism whatever sentinels!!!!

Magneto: Oh, sentinels. How quaint. *throws eighteen wheeler truck filled with petrol and sentinel goes BOOM*

DISSECT-O-METER: 10 Bazzars. Yeah, poor Tobin just got slammed by one of my pet peeves.
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"IN DISSECTED DAY..."

TITLE: Green Lantern Corps V2 (DC).

ISSUE: 35.

CULPRIT: Peter J. Tomasi (writer).

DISSECTION: See if you can spot this one; if you haven't been following the storyline (not necessarily GL, but the whole of DC for the past couple of years), you might not be able to:


DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars.
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""

TITLE: Marvels: Eye Of The Camera (Marvel).

ISSUE: 05 of 06.

CULPRIT: Kurt Busiek & Roger Stern (writers).

DISSECTION: X-Factor and X-Terminators make their appearance on the scene; and in case you're not in the know, X-Factor was comprised of the five original X-Men; and in their guise of the X-Terminators, they pretended to be mutant hunters... however, the writers here get it the other way around.

DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars.
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"I KNOW, LET'S PAINT "CÁNADA" ON THE SIDE OF THE EMPIRE STATE!"

TITLE: Mighty Avengers (Marvel).

ISSUE: 24.

CULPRIT: Rafa Sandoval (penciller).

DISSECTION: The Avengers fight a villain in Buenos Aires, and a building has the word "Uruguay" painted on the side. Now, as unlikely as this is, it's not impossible... but you don't spell my country's name as "Úruguay"...

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars. Though thanks for trying, Rafa.
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"ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DOOM!"

TITLE: Thor V1 (Marvel).

ISSUE: 601.

CULPRIT: J. Michael Straczynski (writer).

DISSECTION: *sigh* Why must writers make characters mention modern stuff to be hip and show the public they are "down with things". AND WHY THE FUCK ARE WE SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE THAT DOCTOR DOOM DOES NOT KNOW WHAT A WINKLE IS, AND THAT NOT KNOWING, HE WOULD CHECK WIKI-FUCKING-PEDIA!!!

DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars. Out of character, much? Also, I refuse to believe that Doom keeps his subjects "malnourished"... Doom provides for his people!!!
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"MAN OUT OF TIME."

TITLE: X-Men: The Times And Life Of Lucas Bishop (Marvel).

ISSUE: 03 of 03.

CULPRIT: Duane Swierczynski (writer).

DISSECTION: So, Bishop arrives in the X-Men's time, and it's the "early nineties"? Duane, ever heard of the "sliding timeline" Marvel uses? If Bishop arrived in the early nineties, then this doesn't fit with Marvel's timeline.

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars.
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"BUENAS MUCHACHOS."

TITLE: Zorro (Dynamite).

ISSUE: 12.

CULPRIT: Matt Wagner (writer).

DISSECTION: You know how you save the worst or the best for last? Well, guess which one is this... The usual assortment of Spanish language mistakes; both from Wagner and from Bowland; but the worst is confusing the gender of words. "Good day" is "buenos dias" o "buen dia", not "buenas dias", and "good night" is "buenas noches", not "buenos noches". GRRR!!! I really hate that Wagner keeps insisting on using Spanish, and failing at that, because the art and story are good!

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars. Only a total of sixteen dissections in this issue, though... pretty good.
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So April has an average of 6.5 Bazzars in a total of seventy-four dissections. Moments Of The Weeks? Plenty of them, starting with some funk:


Right on! Then, douchiness:


That Tony! Lies on videotape, but no sex:


He's fast... Then, avert your eyes:


Don't say I didn't warn you! Now, if you're done scrubbing the back of your eyes with steel wool, a much awaited return:



Because sometime, a Legion needs more than one Superdude. Last, Bullseye makes some nice conversation with his boss:


Yeah, I've been wondering what's with the hair too... and it seems genetic, I mean, look at Harry... And last, more Doom, coming full circle:


Now, some might stop and point out that Doom is being selfless, in his own twisted way... but I will point out that up until now he did have regrets and guilt? Uh-oh...

That's it for now, until next time, I'll be on the outlook for more dissections, because (almost) nothing escapes...

THE DISSECTOR!

1 comment:

MaGnUs said...

Comments originally posted on ICS.net, right after the column was posted:

Nick S.: "X-Factor and X-Terminators make their appearance on the scene; and in case you're not in the know, X-Factor was comprised of the five original X-Men; and in their guise of the X-Terminators, they pretended to be mutant hunters... however, the writers here get it the other way around."

Sorry Mags... Haven't read the issue, so I don't know which way it is in the comic, but YOU got it the wrong way around. X-Factor are the mutant hunters, when they pretended to be humans with tech catching mutants, and X-Terminators are the mutant terrorists, who they pretended to be when fighting themselves to gain the trust of other mutants.


Martín "MaGnUs" Pérez: You're right, I got that wrong. I wasn't sure, and the source I checked didn't have it clear enough so it reinforced my mistake. Thanks.


Nick S.: XD. Sorry, that post came off a little bit accusatory. I was trying to say that I didn't know whether you made the error or whether it was in the comic and you didn't catch it, not to be all YOU DID IT WRONG BWOARGH!.

Good column, and way to get closer to being caught up. God, I love Mini Marvels.


Martín "MaGnUs" Pérez: LOL, but I did fuck up with that. I should have checked a second source. And yeah, I'm close to being caught up; tonight I'm gonna see if I can actually read the comics for the weeks of May... I've only read the important ones and I have like 15 books from the week of 05/06, four from 05/13, and another 15 from 05/20 (and I haven't even got all my books for that week)... only then I can write a column for May...

Thanks for the nice words, I'm glad you liked it. I did like how my ranty side came out in this column, it makes, I think, for a better read. And the Mini Marvels are the shit, unlike that crap Super Hero Squad...