Monday, December 13, 2010

The Dissector #189.

DISCLAIMER (angry creators, please read)

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

"Volstagg the Magnified will not suffer the claws nor yellow fangs nor crude weapons of filthy trolls! No numbers are great enough to overthrow me! Am i not the acknowledged paragon of martial virtue? Am I not the most celebrated paladin of the realm eternal? Do you know why the vast river Vaskrundr flows past the South face of Vindrbjarg Mountain in far Alfheim? Because Volstagg got tired of seeing it flow past the North face of Vindrbjarg Mountain! I barked but once and it obeyed me with fear and trembling! Now, doesn't that frost your breeches?" Volstagg The Voluminous, while slaying trolls, Warriors Three #2.

That's some quote. Get the full action in the Moments Of The Week. Let's get started, then... this is a column for books published on 12/02; as usual, there might be a few stragglers. Last week's DT! was cracked by JhonnyDoe (badge for him)... it was obviously that Hobgoblin is a very well known villain in the Marvel universe; so there's no way nobody recognized him or got a hit in metahuman databases. On another not, I need to retract from the dissections I made last week (in The Rundown) on X-Men: Phoenix Force Handbook. Turns out the character I thought had been wrongly named "Bran Braddock" was actually named "Bran", and that when I saw "Corps", instead of "Captain Britain Corps", that was right, because both names are common; since not all members are codenamed Captain Britain, despite most being Brian Braddock's alternate versions, or their replacements.

Here are The Dissector's Picks Of The Week. Best Book Of The Week was Captain America: Patriot #4. Just a great end to a very good mini... that's all. Congrats to Karl Kesel, Mitch Breitweiser, Bettie Breitweiser, and all the rest of the team. Worst Book Of The Week was almost Action Comics Annual #13... the whole retcon of Lex Luthor getting where he got because he got Apokolips tech and worked for Darkseid as a young man; or studying under Ra's al Ghul, dying and getting raised in a Lazarus Pit... this is almost as bad as that retcon a few years back where Thomas Wayne visits Krypton before its destruction, and all of Wayne Enterprises success (or at least, its resurgence since it apparently was at a low point never mentioned before) comes from Thomas Wayne (who was a medical doctor) single-handledly reverses-engineering Kryptonian technology. But no, this book at least was readable, and it had good art... two things not shared by the actual Worst Book Of The Week, JSA All-Stars #13. Not only it focuses on the less interesting members of the JSA (and is one of the most shameless spin-offs ever); but while it tells a Cyclone story, it shows the rest of the team on some space mission... but it looks like there's a lot of pages missing; as the space mission progresses from battling some sort of sandworm into being captured by aliens with no explanation how it happens... not even "meanwhile, in space" note or something like that. To boot, the art looks like this, and Howard Porter inches closely to an Autopsy Award that features bloody stumps and blunt crayolas... Oh, and there's the Cover Of The Week, by Matthew Clark and Guy Major, from Doom Patrol #17... nice, isn't it? Of course, roadkill would also look nice next to Porter's art in All-Stars, but this is actually a nice cover.

The Rundown: Chaos War: God Squad (Amadeus Cho's eyes shouldn't be blue), Doom Patrol V5 (Rita Farr's eyes shouldn't be green), Generation Hope (Wolverine's eyes are brown first, then blue), Warriors Three (an accented letter is smaller than it should be, but all others are the right size, Volstagg's eyes are first brown, then the correct blue, and Reed Richards' eyes should be brown), Women Of Marvel (Valeria and Franklin Richards should not look the same age, Reed Richard's eyes should be brown, Shanna's story shouldn't be set in 1956, and she shouldn't have superstrength).
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"HE'S SO INVISIBLE, WE DON'T NOTICE WHICH OF THE TWO HE IS HALF OF THE TIME."

TITLE: Adventure Comics V1 (DC).

ISSUE: 520.

CULPRIT: Paul Levitz (writer).

DISSECTION: Roy, one of my loyal readers, and member of the HDSC, noticed that in October's issue, Levitz labels (in the small info boxes) Invisible Kid as Jacques Foccart, the second Invisible Kid; when this is obviously the first one, Lyle Norg (due to this being a story set in the Legion's beginnings, and the fact that Norg was white and Foccart is black).

DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars. Badge for Lieutenant Roy.
<-------------------------------->
"WHITE STAR."

TITLE: Adventure Comics V1 (DC).

ISSUE: 521.

CULPRIT: Hi-Fi (colorist).

DISSECTION: Dawnstar is descended from Native Americans... she is not fair-skinned like Caucasians, and she does not have blue eyes.

DISSECT-O-METER: 10 Bazzars. Twice. Get a fucking grip on the characters you are working on. Also, her powers are listed just as "long-range tracking", when she can fly and survive in space on her own. Mon-El's powers are also incomplete.
<-------------------------------->
"DISSECTION IN MARS."

TITLE: Brightest Day (DC).

ISSUE: 15.

CULPRIT: Geoff Johns & Peter J. Tomasi (writers).

DISSECTION: This should be an easy one. Check out (old) Batman talking about getting old and his JLA friends:


DISSECT-O-METER: 10 Bazzars.
<-------------------------------->
"CHAOS ATE MY CREDITS."

TITLE: Chaos War: Alpha Flight (Marvel).

ISSUE: One-shot.

CULPRIT: Mark Paniccia (editor).

DISSECTION: Yeah.... THERE ARE NO DETAILED CREDITS IN THE WHOLE ISSUE!!! Just last names of writer, penciller, inker, and colorist on the cover... Tom Brevoort says it was a goof-up at Mark Panniccia's office; and since I don't know wich assistant editor, associated editor, or production assistant was involved, I blame solely Paniccia.

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars. Also, Aurora is called "Jean-Marie" instead of "Jeanne-Marie".
<-------------------------------->
"NOTHING THE DISSECTO."

TITLE: The Dissector (Studio Robota).

ISSUE: 188.

CULPRIT: MaGnUs (writer).

DISSECTION: I should have Donald313 read my columns before I post them. I missed a word in one dissection and a letter in a Moment. Two badges for him.

DISSECT-O-METER: 5 Bazzars for the word, 1 for the letter.
<-------------------------------->
"JSA NO-STARS."

TITLE: JSA All-Stars (DC).

ISSUE: 13.

CULPRIT: Matthew Sturges (writer).

DISSECTION: As mentioned before, the outer space mission team is horribly told, not just badly written, but downright missing pages.

DISSECT-O-METER: 10 Bazzars. Not to mention several art and coloring mistakes, including Cyclone's costume.
<-------------------------------->
Only 7.1 Bazzars in twenty-six dissections, higher than usual, but lower than I thought with all those tens. Now, Moments Of The Week. First up, Quislet is passed up for a Green Lantern ring:


Come on, stupid Dyogene doesn't even acknowledge Quislet? Or maybe Levitz knows that if he makes Quislet a GL, I'll die of fanboyness... Who gets the ring?


Mon-El, proving that he can never run out of horrible costumes... White boots, Mon? And over at Buffy, who buys the farm?


Giles! I guess it's not going to be permanent, but still... shocking scene... if only Dark Horse had better artists working this book. Over at another licensed property, how do you ease your fears?


Well, if you're Monterey Jack, this way! And as a finale, the fight scene from where this week's quote came from:


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

THE DISSECTOR!

18 comments:

JohnnyDoe said...

A stab at the DT!: Barry isn't surrounded by the speed force, he just draws his energy/power from it.

Btw, you misspelled my name as JhonnyDoe :-)

MaGnUs said...

That's not it, maybe Barry's not surrounded by the Speed Force (though I'd have to check that); but it's an acceptable figure of speech. And sorry about the name. :)

JohnnyDoe said...

No problem. It happens :-)

Another stab then: the Green Lanterns power rings doesn't make them live longer.

Another little thing I noticed; in the Chaos War: alpha-flight dissection you wrote "...don't know wich assistant editor...", I think you meant which not wich.

MaGnUs said...

Yeah, it's "which"... and no, it's not the GL thing. A GL ring protects you from harm, so conceivably, it can keep you germ free, and protect your general health, extending your life or making you stay in better shape.

Darryn said...

DT - An 'Amazonian' princess would be from South America, whereas Diana is an 'Amazon' princess from Themyscira/Paradise Island.

Cheers

Donald313 said...

Okay, time for Donald313, the Typo-Slayer:
The rundown: JhonnyDoe, but he corrected it himself.
I think it is only obvious that Hobgoblin is a well known villain, not obviously.
On another notE, you retracted something.
Thomas Wayne reverse-engineered the technology, not reverses-engineered.
About the DT, I wanted to guess something about the half-human Atlantean thing, but the Amazonian thingie sounds like the correct answer.

Sidney said...

I'm going to say (even though you might give it to Donald313 since he mentioned it first) that it's the fact that Aquaman is NOT half-human. The current is (as far As I know) half Atlantean and Half demi-god, no human in the mix.Of course, since DC seems obsessed with returning all their characters to a Pre-Crisis state, that may have changed. I don't know, I don't follow Aquaman.

MaGnUs said...

Darryn: "Amazonian" is still correct to refer to an Amazon.

Donald: Right on all counts, including the DT.

Sid: Yeah, Don's getting it. Aquaman is full Atlantean; although his father, Atlan, had mystyical powers (call it demigod if you want).

Sidney said...

Anyways, I found a couple of mistakes. The first is in Comic Book Guy the Comic Book #5. I don't know if you would consider something from a Simpsons comic to be a mistake since they play it loose with physics, but I feel it's wrong. To quote, "The ice cold milkshake mix put (Comic Book Guy) into a state of hypothermia, keeping him barely alive." To quote Morbo from Futurama, "Hypothermia does not work that way!" And to make it even more of a wall banger, it's Lisa who says it.

In Project Superpowers X-Mas Carol #1, the spirit of the Fighting Yank is talking about members of the Supremacy that are still at large, with symbolic pictures of them behind them. However, three of them, President West, Dynamic Man, and Dynamic Woman, quit the Supremacy and joined the heroes a while ago in the second volume of Project Superpowers. Then again, continuity has never been that good in the PS books.

Couple of typos in this weeks Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #5. "De tainment quadrant" in the Beetles Armor entry, and "as wellas"in the Marvel Apes entry.

Sidney said...

Whoops, I meant Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Update #5.

MaGnUs said...

The Simpsons one gets a pass; but the others are in. Who wrote X-Mas Superpowers issue?

Sidney said...

The writer was Brandon Jerwa, although it could have been the artist Patrick Berkenkotter who made the mistake.

Another one from OHotMU Update #5. In the Boomerang (Fred Myers) entry, he was referred to as "Mort" once instead of Myers.

MaGnUs said...

I meant to ask both writer and artist... and is this OHOTMU update coordinated by Anthony Flamini?

Sidney said...

No, Jeff Christiansen and Mike O'Sullivan are.

MaGnUs said...

Oh, ok. Thanks.

Darryn said...

Looks like DC have retconned the retcon again on Aquaman, on Didio's Facebook page he confirms that Aquaman is now half human again..

Anonymous said...

Like I said before, DC seems obsessed with bring back all the stupidest concepts of the Silver Age. Mopey will probably be next.

MaGnUs said...

You know, he doesn't actually say it in a column (much less in a published comic story); so I'm not going to retract until they do retcon it... he just replies to your FB comment with a "don't be confused, just go with it"... I don't think he even knew what you were talking about... :)