The Dissector

The Dissector #128.

DISCLAIMER (angry creators, please read)

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

"Yeah, well, I know this is Gotham, where it's law apparently that people conduct every important conversation on a rooftop (...)" Hal Jordan, Justice League: Cry For Justice #2.

Welcome to the column for comics released on 08/05; I'm still missing a couple of books, but I'll get them eventually. Let's start with the DT!, JohnnyDoe does it again, noticing that Supergirl calls Streaky "she", when the supercat has always been male. Good job, Ensign, one more badge and you make Lieutenant.

The Dissector's Picks Of The Week are as follow; Worst Book Of The Week was Ultimatum: X-Men Requiem; pure crap, top of the shit that they've done with the Ultimate Universe. Remember when it was good? Best Book Of The Week was an easy choice; The Amazing Spider-Man #601... fun story, moving along the plot, and cementing the idea that Mary Jane remembers what really happened between her and Peter. Well, what are you waiting for? There're dissections to be read!
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"ACCENTS OF ATLAS."

TITLE: Agents Of Atlas V2 (Marvel).

ISSUE: 09.

CULPRIT: Tom Orzechowski (letterer).

DISSECTION: A letter with a diacritic is smaller than it should be.

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars.
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"ALL-HYPHEN-COMICS."

TITLE: All Winners Comics 70th Anniversary Special (Marvel).

ISSUE: One-shot.

CULPRIT: Jared K. Fletcher (letterer) and/or Karl Kesel (writer), and/or Anthony Dial (production), and/or Jeanine Schaefer (associate editor), and/or Tom Brevoort (executive editor).

DISSECTION: The original book's name is "All-Winners...", yet this special is "All Winners...".

DISSECT-O-METER: 3 Bazzar. Can't really give it any higher, as it might be intentional, but I don't really see the reason. On another note, cover artist Daniel Acuña is credited as "Acuna", and variant cover artist Marcos Martín is credited as "Martin".
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"CAGE ME AND DYE MY HAIR."

TITLE: The Amazing Spider-Man V1 (Marvel).

ISSUE: 601

CULPRIT: Morry Hollowell (colorist, back up story)

DISSECTION: Danielle Cage's hair is colored a reddish brown instead of black.

DISSECT-O-METER: 6 Bazzars. Also, her mother's eyes are colored incorrectly too; and there's an accented letter that's smaller than it should be. Argh, I'm going to have to come up with a shorthand term for that... or not, since there might always be new readers, and it'd be a pain to link to a glossary.
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"LÁ PÁNTHÈRÉ NÓÍRÉ"

TITLE: Black Panther V5 (Marvel).

ISSUE: 07.

CULPRIT: Jonathan Mayberry & Reginald Hudlin (writers).

DISSECTION: A political commentator on Wakandan television uses the word "lattes", but it's spelled "lattés" (and of course, the accented letter is smaller than the rest), but the word is just "lattes". This is what linguists call a hypercorrection; something that occurs when a real or imagined grammatical/phonetical rule is applied in a mistaken or non-standard context, so that a desire to be "correct" leads to an incorrect result.

I love it that there's even sub-forms, like hyperurbanism ("an indulged desire to be posher than posh") and hyperforeignism, but it can occur in the attempt to adapt to any mode of speech. Go check out that wiki article, it's very enlightening.

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars each, the hypercorrection and the smaller letter.
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"I STUBBED MY TOW."

TITLE: The Boys (Dynamite).

ISSUE: 33.

CULPRIT: Garth Ennis (writer).

DISSECTION: The phrase "tow the line", a variation on "toe the line", is used when the original was intended.

DISSECT-O-METER: 5 Bazzars.
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"IT'S CRITI NOLL!"

TITLE: Captain America: Reborn (Marvel).

ISSUE: 02 of 05.

CULPRIT: Paul Monts (colorist).

DISSECTION: Hank Pym's eyes are colored brown, when he has blue eyes. Of course, Norman's eyes are also colored incorrect.

DISSECT-O-METER: 6 Bazzars for Pym, 8 for Norman.
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"..."

TITLE: Dark Reign: Zodiac (Marvel).

ISSUE: 02 of 03.

CULPRIT: Jose Villarubia (colorist).

DISSECTION: Norman. That's all I'll say.

DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars.
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"DOOMED DRAWINGS."

TITLE: Doom Patrol V5 (DC).

ISSUE: 01.

CULPRIT: Matthew Clark (penciller).

DISSECTION: YEAH! A new Doom Patrol book! By Keith Giffen, no less, who as far as I know has never written them in a regular basis, but I trust him with the characters (yeah, like he asked). Good start, but there's a couple of dissections. In particular, Matthew Clark draws Negative Man with some drawings (a la cast graffiti) on his bandages... that weren't there the panel before.

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars. Also, colorist Guy Major gives Rita Farr green eyes when they should be brown, on both covers, and on the second feature (I love this second feature thing DC's got going on) he gives Doc Magnus green eyes instead of blue ones.
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"THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE DISSECTED."

TITLE: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (Dynamite).

ISSUE: 01.

CULPRIT: Esteve Polls (artist) and Marc Rueda (colorist).

DISSECTION: Yes, this is from last month, but I noticed the dissection on this issue just now. See if you can spot it:


DISSECT-O-METER: Double dissection, really, with a 7 Bazzars rating.
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"EL HORRIBLE, EL MALO, Y EL ESPANTOSO."

TITLE: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (Dynamite).

ISSUE: 02.

CULPRIT: Chuck Dixon (writer).

DISSECTION: *sigh* There's a TON of wanton attacks on the Spanish language, atrocities that make me cringe, like translating "Yes, boss!" as "Si, el jefe!", which, of course, means, "Yes, the boss!" Not even Google makes that mistake:


There's some French mistakes, and small accented letters galore. What can we expect of the quality control of a company which has the book on its website as "THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE ULGY"... "Ulgy"?!??!

DISSECT-O-METER: 10 Bazzars for this one, I just can't let it pass, it's atrocious. The rest get lower ratings, but are still horrible. Come on Chuck, you're a professional. Seriously, I'll translate ALL Spanish dialogues for ALL comic book writers out there... the time I spend doing that will be less time I spend writing this column!
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"ARES GOES NORMAN."

TITLE: Hulk V3 (Marvel).

ISSUE: 13.

CULPRIT: Dan Brown (colorist).

DISSECTION: No, it's not Norman's eyes!!! This time it's Ares, who gets his normal brown colored eyes in most of the issue, but has his eyes colored blue for a few panels.

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars.
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"CRY FOR SPELLING JUSTICE."

TITLE: Justice League: Cry For Justice (DC).

ISSUE: 02 of 07.

CULPRIT: James Robinson (writer).

DISSECTION: "Villians"?

DISSECT-O-METER: 4 Bazzars. Also, numerous incorrect renderings of Hal Jordan's emblem by Mauro Cascioli.
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"PICARD WEARS CONTACTS, HE BUYS THEM WHERE NORMAN BUYS HIS."

TITLE: Star Trek: Alien Spotlight: Q (IDW).

ISSUE: One-shot.

CULPRIT: Ilaria Traversi (colorist).

DISSECTION: Cool! Q! The Tipton brothers manage to convey the feeling of a TNG episode, well done! However, colorist Traversi decides that Picard has green eyes, instead of brown.

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars.
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"BLUE EYE HARVEST."

TITLE: Star Wars: Dark Times - Blue Harvest (Dark Horse).

ISSUE: 00.

CULPRIT: Dave McCaig (colorist).

DISSECTION: Don Alférez Carlos, from the Cuerpo Honorario De Exploración Disectiva, or, to drop the Matt Wagner Zorro crap, Ensign Carlos from the HDSC spotted a Kilmaulsi (birdlike alien) changing eye colors between panels.

DISSECT-O-METER: 4 Bazzars.
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"CROUCH LOWER."

TITLE: Star Wars: Invasion (Dark Horse).

ISSUE: 02 of 05.

CULPRIT: Colin Wilson (artist).

DISSECTION: Lowbacca (Chewie's nephew) is drawn at around the same height than the Solo twins, when he's much taller.

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars. Nice to have a comic book in the New Jedi Order era, it had been neglected because of the prequels.
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"ULTIMATE SCIENCE!"

TITLE: Ultimatum: Fantastic Four Requiem (Marvel).

ISSUE: One-shot.

CULPRIT: Joe Pokaski (writer).

DISSECTION: Sue Storm says that "any fire needs oxygen", when that's not true. The Human Torch's fire needs oxygen, but not all fires do.

DISSECT-O-METER: 4 Bazzars, as much as she is a brilliant scientist, she's nervous, trying to save her brother.
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"DEFECTIVE COMICS."

TITLE: Various DC Books Released On 08/05 (DC).

ISSUE: N/A.

CULPRIT: Pat Brosseau (letterer).

DISSECTION: So, the new Magog book is written by "Kieth" Giffen?

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars.
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"FORTUNE 500."

TITLE: War Machine V2 (Marvel).

ISSUE: 08.

CULPRIT: Greg Pak (writer).

DISSECTION: I forgot to thank War Machine artist Leonardo Manco, who I recently interviewed in his hometown of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Not only he graciously returned to the site of the interview after I was late because I had gotten lost in an unfamiliar area of the city, but he wouldn't let me pay for the beer and snacks we had; and on top of that gave me a stack of autographed War Machines, plus an issue of Skorpio with featured one of my all-time favorite stories: Tauromaquia.

I met Leonardo, who I'm now proud to call a friend, back in 2006 in a con in Montevideo, my hometown, and interviewed him as the artist for Hellblazer. Talking to him, he mentioned that his first pro work had been "Tauromaquia" (a story about futuristic bullfighters), and I was flabbergasted! One of my favorite comics ever! We struck up some conversation, he sketched a wonderful John Constantine for me... and earlier this year we got in contact again through Facebook. The interview was wonderful, and he's a very nice guy... if anyone wants to listen to the interview (in Spanish), you can find it here, or here.

Anyway, we had a dissection, right? And it's not Leo's fault; in fact, I'm happy to say I've never featured him in this column as a culprit. In this case, Ronin (Clint Barton) thinks Tony Stark's the CEO of Stark Solutions; when it's public knowledge that Tony's a wanted man, and the dismantling of his company has been all over the news.

DISSECT-O-METER: 5 Bazzars.
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This week's column had an average of 6.3 Bazzars in fifty-seven dissections. Now, let's go to the Moments Of The Week. First, from Star Trek: Alien Spotlight: Q, Picard enjoys seeing Q sweat while the godlike creature takes control of Picard's body to learn better what it is to be human:


I loved it how Q episodes could be humorous, dramatic, or any mix of the two. Then, the War Of Kings comes to an end, and I didn't expect this:


I certainly didn't... Then, Black Bolt literally screams Vulcan's face off:


Ouch! Next up, Hal Jordan's Adventures In Planet Femme:


With grappa! How Uruguayan of him! Then, Gail Simone fills her Secret Six issues with a lot of cool or funny moments, like this one:


Now there's a man (?) who enjoys his job! And last, the Skywalkers just can't run away from...


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

THE DISSECTOR!