The Dissector

The Dissector #146.

DISCLAIMER (angry creators, please read)

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

01/06-"Everyone should ride in the trunk of a car at least once in their lives. Not that it's some profound rite of passage or an impetus to a great epiphany... it's just that I'd hate to think I was the only schmuck that ever had to do it." Dingo, Dingo #2.

01/13-"When a blackout happens, most people's first thought is, "Better light a candle." Mine is, "How many alarm systems just went offline?"" Catwoman, Catwoman #83.

COME ON PEOPLE!!! I know I have more readers, so go vote on the 2009 Autopsy Awards! Now that that's out of the way, this is the column for books released on the weeks of 01/06 and 01/13; still trying to catch up. If I can have the one for 01/20 ready for next Friday, I'll be caught up.

Last column's DT! was spotted by J. Corbin; who correctly pointed out that "Pinocchio" is spelled incorrectly in the book on Supergirl's desk. Did I mention you need to vote on the Autopsy Awards? And that you can give out this url: http://tinyurl.com/autopsy2009 for people to go and read the nominations? Oh, okay.

Best Book Of The Week for 01/06 was Suicide Squad #67; one of DC's undead titles for the Blackest Night skip month. It was good to have John Ostrander, legendary Squad writer, joined by Secret Six writer Gail Simon, who's also shown that she can write villains as leads. J. Calafiore's art is good, if not exceptional; and while the overall book is little more than a fill-in issue that could have been done as part of Secret Six (as the recent Deadshot issue penned by Ostrander), it was a nice blast from the past for Squad fans like me. Worst Book Of The Week was JSA All-Stars #2. Inconsequential plot, bad art.

Best Book Of The Week for 01/13 was Adventure Comics #509; just a little "Metropolis 500 Miles"-style Lex Luthor story; and the conclusion to Superboy's existential dilemma about him being the science lovechild of Lex and Superman: he knows he's all Superman where it counts. Manapul's watercolor art gives the book a nice retro feel; but Geoff Johns manages to mix in Silver Age elements (like Luthor's sister) into modern comics without it being ridiculous. Worst Book Of This Week was Psylocke #3... why do I keep reading this book?

Here's The Rundown: Action Comics (Hal's badge is wrong, Congorilla is too big), The Amazing Spider-Man V1 (Bachalo's name is spelled incorrectly in the letters column), Batgirl V3 (it's not enough to have accented letters smaller, now dotted i's are smaller?), Batman: The Widening Gyre (Tim Drake's hair is wrong), Batman (Batman's gloves are wrong; so is The Riddler's hair), Black Panther V5 (Mr. Fantastic's eyes are colored wrong, and so are Doctor Doom's, and Doom's change between pages from the right color to the wrong one and back), Catwoman (I don't know what eye color Selina's sister has; but they change between pages), Dark X-Men (Ares' eyes are wrong), The Great Ten (Jay Garrick's costume is wrong), Greek Street (a female character is named "Rashid", when that's a male name; the female version should be "Rashida"), Green Arrow/Black Canary (Ollie says he's never seen a military unit that wears blue camo; but there are multiple examples of blue camo wearing military units around the world, including some in the USA), House Of Mystery V2 (the word "eaten" is spelled "et"), JSA All-Stars (several characters have inexplicable all-white eyes, there's a costuming mistake, and Magog's healthy eye changes from his correct blue to brown), Nation X: X-Factor (Rictor's eyes are the wrong color, Nightcrawler's costume is wrong), Nation X (Anole's arm is wrong), New Mutants V3 (Magik's mystical abilities still missing from her description), Psylocke (Betsy's eyes should be violet), Punisher Max: Get Castle (if Frank was a Marine, why is he wearing a US Army watch?), Red Robin (Rā's al Ghūl's eyes are colored incorrectly), S.W.O.R.D. (B.E.A.S.T.), Siege (Donald Blake magically grew some Banshee style sideburns; an entire page of text in the H.A.M.M.E.R. transcript files is repeated) , Spider-Man & The Secret Wars (Doctor Doom is insanely larger than Spider-Man), Strange V2 (Doctor Strange's eyes are colored wrong on the cover, then inside, then they're right), Suicide Squad (Catman's eyes should be blue, not green), Titans V2 (Roy's hair is wrong on the cover, Dinah's wearing her old costume for some reason), The Unwritten (accented letter... what, only one in the whole Rundown?). Now, let's go vote on the 2009 Autopsy Awards, and then, read this column's dissections:
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"OHNOES, IT'S AN ILLEGAL CRIME!"

TITLE: The Amazing Spider-Man Presents: Jackpot (Marvel).

ISSUE: 01 of 03.

CULPRIT: Marc Guggenheim (writer).

DISSECTION: Jackpot runs into criminals doing some "illegal smuggling" on the docks. Hey, Jackpot... all smuggling is illegal; if it's legal it's called "import/export".

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars.
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"SCIENCE JACKPOT."

TITLE: The Amazing Spider-Man Presents: Jackpot (Marvel).

ISSUE: 01 of 03.

CULPRIT: Marc Guggenheim (writer).

DISSECTION: Jackpot got her powers while working in a lab that was researching a cure for Parkinson. They wanted to do rewriting the genetic code of every cell in the body. How? Using a virus, apparently because "that's what viruses do--they rewrite the DNA of the cells they infect." Uh... no, virus don't usually rewrite DNA or we'd be in (more) trouble (than we already are). Only retroviruses (like the HIV virus) do that, via the enzyme called "reverse transcriptase".

DISSECT-O-METER: 9 Bazzars.
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"SHHH!!! IT'S A SEKRIT!!!"

TITLE: Batman Confidential (DC).

ISSUE: 40.

CULPRIT: Sam Kieth (writer).

DISSECTION: An enemy knows about Batman's parents dying in Crime Alley, and he thinks "No one knows about that except Alfred." Uhm? What about Robin? And if this story's before Robin came into the picture... what about Leslie Thompkins?

DISSECT-O-METER: 6 Bazzars. Also; how many times do we have to go through scenes of Batman and Gordon surprised that ghosts or metahumans exist? No matter how early it is in his career, that doesn't fly.
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"WHO DISSECTS THE DISSECTOR? WELL, HIS HDSC AND HIMSELF!"

TITLE: The Dissector (Studio Robota).

ISSUE: Special #06.

CULPRIT: MaGnUs (writer).

DISSECTION: Donald313 found two dissections in column #145, and he also noticed that I wrote: "I admit it, I always nominate a Legion moment because love them" in the Special. That's three badges for you, Don.

DISSECT-O-METER: 4 Bazzars. I also found a few minor dissections in older columns while working on the nominations. What nominations, you ask? The ones for the 2009 Autopsy Awards!
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"BILL OF WRONGS."

TITLE: Galactica 1980 (Dynamite).

ISSUE: 04 of 04.

CULPRIT: Marc Guggenheim (writer).

DISSECTION: Adama in the original continuity was just called "Adama", not "William Adama" like in the new show; so this character shouldn't be referred to as "Bill" by Baltar.

DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars. There are also some accented letters smaller than they should, including two that are not only smaller, but in a different font, and one that for some reason is in lower case while the rest of the word is in caps.
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"TORNADISSECTION."

TITLE: Red Tornado V2 (DC).

ISSUE: 05 of 06.

CULPRIT: Kevin VanHook (writer).

DISSECTION: Check this one out:


DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars. Also, penciller "José Luís" or "José Luis" is credited as "Luis" inside the book and as "Luís" on the cover. One of the two is wrong.
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"UNA FLOR Y OTRA FLOR CELESTE DEL JACARANDA."

TITLE: X-Men Forever V2 (Marvel).

ISSUE: 15.

CULPRIT: Chris Claremont (writer).

DISSECTION: According to Claremont, there are jacaranda trees in Wakanda's capital. Seeing as to how jacarandas are native to South America, and that Wakanda has always been pretty isolationist, I highly doubt it. Jacaranda trees exist in places other than South America; for example, Pretoria in South Africa is popularly known as The Jacaranda City because of the large amount of specimens of this tree it has.

But, I chalk it up to Claremont screwing up, knowing his recent track record.

DISSECT-O-METER: 6 Bazzars. There are other writing and lettering mistakes; not worth mentioning.
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"CARTOGRAPHY IS NOT PROFESSOR XAVIER'S FORTE."

TITLE: X-Men Origins: Cyclops (Marvel).

ISSUE: One-shot.

CULPRIT: Jesse Delperdang (penciller).

DISSECTION: I don't care that it might be a stylized computer generated map... this is ridiculous:


DISSECT-O-METER: 5 Bazzars. Iceman's original costume is wrong too.
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So, we got an average of 6.3 Bazzars in a total of sixty four dissections. Let's get on with the Covers Of Each Week. Cover from 01/06 is this nicely painted cover the first issue of Siege, by Gabrielle Dell'Otto:


You can't even tell if Norman's eyes are colored incorrectly. Then, Cover from 01/13 was this retro piece from The Marvels Project #5, by Captain America artist extraordinaire Steve Epting:


He's literally jumping out at you! Now, let's go with the Moments Of The Week. One from 01/06, what the hell is the Negative Man doing?


Well, I guess looking like Tutankhamun's mummy will make you a bit lonely... Then, two moments from 01/13... first, Lex Luthor tells us how it is:


He just healed his sister and made her walk again. Yes, Lex Luthor exists!!! But what else can he do?


Yup, take his cure back. Yer a reaaal piece of work, Lexy. That's it for now, until next time, I'll be on the outlook for more dissections, because (almost) nothing escapes... did you vote on the 2009 Autopsy Awards yet? GO VOTE!!!

THE DISSECTOR!