DISCLAIMER (angry creators, please read)
[[WARNING! THIS COLUMN MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS!]]
08/04 "Whoa, wait a minute. This is Khund porn? Shouldn't there be some, you know, sex...?" Captain Comet, R.E.B.E.L.S. #19.
08/11 "YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO SCREAM AS LOUD ASS YA WANT WHILE I KICK YOUR ASS!" Guy Gardner, Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors #1.
08/18 "(Luke Cage) somehow managed to look manly in yellow silk, which just might be his greatest super-power." Iron Fist, Shadowland: Power Man #1.
08/25 "Delphyne, I love you, but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!" Amadeus Cho, Heroic Age: Prince Of Power #4.
Late? You say I'm late? Well, yes, a tad late, I suppose. But here's the column for THE ENTIRE MONTH OF AUGUST!!!!! You might have guessed that from the quotes, and let's go quickly through the Dissector's Picks Of Each Week:
Week Of 08/04: Best Book Of The Week was R.E.B.E.L.S. #20; good use of Brainiac characters, plus Claude St. Aubin's art is pretty neat. Worst Book Of The Week was Batman Confidential #47, Kevin VanHook's Batman-battles-the-supernatural-yet-doesn't-believe-in-it stories are horrible.
Week Of 08/11: Best Book Of The Week was Tom Strong & The Robots Of Doom #3, just pulpy goodness. Worst Book Of The Week was Superman #702. JMS's "Superman Walks Among Regular Folk" has been done before... and it's boring.
Week Of 08/18: Best Book Of The Week was Darkwing Duck #3, just like the TV show, month after month. Worst Book Of The Week was Uncanny X-Men #527... the story is passable, but Whilce Portacio and Leonard Kirk make Emma Frost seem like a crack whore, and Colossus like a mentally deficient jock. The art is just hideous, I tell you.
Week Of 08/25: Best Book Of The Week was Heroic Age: Prince Of Power, good mixing of regular superhero adventure with godstuff, and humor on top of it. Worst Book Of The Week was Teen Titans #86. Felicia Henderson's writing is bad, and while the art by José Luís is not as awful as previous issues, it still doesn't make up for the plot.
Oh, no one got the DT! last week, it was the fact that the Kents look like they're 40 at most. The Rundown is ginormous, so you can find it here.
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"RING OF ILLUSIONS."
TITLE: Adventure Comics V1 (DC).
ISSUE: 517.
CULPRIT: Kevin Sharpe (penciller).
DISSECTION: Roy alerted me to this one... the flight belts the Legionnaires wear (before their rings) appear and disappear... then Cosmic Boy has a Legion ring, which he wasn't wearing before.
DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars. Badge for Roy. So that's a double dissection there, and then in the backup, Atom just takes Calculator to Oracle's base, right in front of Babs; plus in the DC Nation column, Eddie Berganza refers to "the Green Lanterns" as "las Linterna Verde". First, it's "los", if you're talking about the people, the corps members, and not the objects. Second, it's "Linternas Verdes", because it's plural.
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"SILENCE OF THE LAMB."
TITLE: Avengers Academy (Marvel).
ISSUE: 03.
CULPRIT: Mike McKone (penciller).
DISSECTION: If Crossbones is supposed to be wearing a muzzle so he can't use his teeth as projectile weapons... why does the thing have enough space for him to actually do that?
DISSECT-O-METER: 5 Bazzars. There's also inconsistent lettering in the credits, and Norman Osborn's eyes are colored incorrectly.
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"VE DAY!"
TITLE: DC Universe Legacies (DC).
ISSUE: 04.
CULPRIT: Len Wein (writer).
DISSECTION: Lots of time period inconsistencies, but apart from those, they refer to a shot fired the same day as Germany surrendered in WWII as "the last shot of the war"... yet Japan surrendered quite later.
DISSECT-O-METER: 10 Bazzars.
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"BAAAA!"
TITLE: The Dissector (Studio Robota).
ISSUE: 174.
CULPRIT: MaGnUs (writer).
DISSECTION: Donald313 noticed that last column said "Jim Baleen" instead of "Balent". I corrected it on the column, but I still admit to it. You get trigger happy with the spell checker sometimes.
DISSECT-O-METER: 6 Bazzars, and a badge for Donald. Three more and you reach Commander.
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"MACHIAVELLIAN DRACULA!"
TITLE: Ides Of Blood (DC/Wildstorm).
ISSUE: 01 of 06.
CULPRIT: Stuart C. Paul (writer).
DISSECTION: While my fellow Uruguayan Christian Duce provides great vampire/roman mood art; writer Stuart C. Paul script throws me out of the story. I understand the need to use linguistic anachronisms in period stories; to better get your point across and connect with the reader. But when the anachronisms in your dialogues go beyond the linguistic and cross into historic things... a story in ancient Rome, with Julius Caesar around, cannot have the word "Machiavellian" or refer to vampires as "dracul"; not several centuries before the birth (let alone work) of the person who inspires the first term, and (even if it's closer) the rise of the order that the second term refers to.
DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars. Yes, they're figure of speech, but you have to be careful.
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"UNITED KRAUT NATIONS."
TITLE: Iron Man Legacy (Marvel).
ISSUE: 05.
CULPRIT: Fred Van Lente (writer).
DISSECTION: This is a good book, Wino Tony Adventures (as Van Lente jokingly refers to it). It's had few errors so far, and in this issue, it was a little slip up. Or a few, but still. Apart from accented letters being smaller than they should, right before Dr. Doom addresses the UN's General Assembly, a translator is translating a speech into German... yet the official languages of the UN, and by extension (if I'm not mistaken, and I did my research), the languages into which things are translated, are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.
DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars. There is also a small
German language mistake, using the German word for "chair" (the piece of furniture) for "chair" as in the chair of a meeting; when there's a specific word for that in German, "Vorsitzender". I snicker when Spanish translation of US stuff think "foreman" is the last name of the head juror in a trial and dub him "Señor Foreman".
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"UNBORN DOOM."
TITLE: Iron Man Legacy (Marvel).
ISSUE: 05.
CULPRIT: Fred Van Lente (writer).
DISSECTION: Dr. Doom says he communicates with the UN through a "sonogram". Uhm... I'm pretty sure that should be a "hologram".
DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars.
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"ALL-STAR DISSECTION."
TITLE: JSA All-Stars (DC).
ISSUE: 09.
CULPRIT: Freddie Williams II (artist).
DISSECTION: Come on, this one is easy.
DISSECT-O-METER: 5 Bazzars.
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"CRYSTAL METHOD."
TITLE: Justice League Of America V2 (DC) / Justice Society Of America V3 (DC).
ISSUE: Various.
CULPRIT: Various.
DISSECTION: David noticed that Mikaal Tomas, the Starman currently in JLA (and in JSA because of the crossover going on right now) used to have a roundish yellow crystal embedded in his chest, but now for some reason it's being drawn sometimes as a giant green rhomboid jewel, and sometimes it's that shape, but yellow. Badge for David, two more and you make Lieutenant!
DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars... I'll give four to JLA, and three to JSA; I have no energy to go back and identify authors.
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"CRAPOSYNTHESIS."
TITLE: TITLE: Justice League Of America V2 (DC).
ISSUE: 48.
CULPRIT: James Robinson (writer).
DISSECTION: Kryptonians process sunlight, but they don't do "photosynthesis", the use of that term, particularly by a scientist like Mr. Terrific is moronic. Photosynthesis is literally s a process that converts carbon dioxide into organic compounds, especially sugars, using the energy from sunlight.
DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars. Dick Grayson's bat emblems are wrong, too.
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"WHAT'S IN THE BOX?"
TITLE: Namor: The First Mutant (Marvel).
ISSUE: 01.
CULPRIT: Stuart Moore (writer).
DISSECTION: Now, if this magical chest thingy can only be opened by a ruler of Atlantis... how the fuck did the vampires put Dracula's head inside of it?
DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars. There are other writing languages, specifically the fact that Namor "blesses" fallen Atlantean warriors in Latin... Latin? Oh, and he doesn't believe in vampires... what? And art wise, Namor's eyes are colored incorrectly, and Atlanteans do not have fins in their calves (much less spiked ones), those are DC Atlanteans... I'm willing to cut Ariel Olivetti some slack, since you could argue these are from a subspecies, or those fins are part of their pants (since they're all wearing pants... and no shirts, except the female...).
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"FUCKING MAGNETS, HOW DO THEY WORK?"
TITLE: New Mutants Forever (Marvel).
ISSUE: 01 of 05.
CULPRIT: Chris Claremont (writer).
DISSECTION: Now, this is as lazy as Green Lantern energy deficits; but older. Magneto has control over magnetism, right? And he's been shown to move or immobilize people by the iron in their blood, right? Among other things, He's lifted submarines, starships, planes, and asteroids, right? Yet he's vexed by a bunch of mercs in non-metallic armor? Even if their armor somehow blocks him from moving the bodies inside, he can impale them with pieces of metal from furniture, the building, etc... reminds me of a cartoon episode where he was attacked and captured by ceramic Sentinels... in the middle of a harbor full of fifty foot yachts...
DISSECT-O-METER: 10 Bazzars. Lots of more errors: eye colors, saying Nova Roma is in the Andes, an accented letter, "Valkyror" instead of "Valkyrior", being surprised that people with paramilitary gear open fire without mercy, being surprised at the new costumes Ilyana conjures, yet they were wearing them in a picture they were looking at minutes earlier, and saying David Haller is Moira's son... Nine errors in the first issue only? Good start (but it was a good read, though), Chris.
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"THOSE PESKY MEMBERS OF OUR OWN FEDERATION!"
TITLE: Star Trek: Burden Of Knowledge (IDW)
ISSUE: 03 of 04.
CULPRIT: Scott & David Tipton (writers).
DISSECTION: Andorian technicians perform an overhaul on the Enterprise's computer systems, something mandated by Starfleet, done at a UFP starbase. While overhauling the computer systems, the Andorians sabotage them to have a bias about Tellarites. When this is discovered and reverted, McCoy complains that the Andorians "are scott free".
What? The Andorians are part of the United Federation Of Planets, and not "their allies", like Bones say. Yes, this is the TOS era, and it was common to have an all-Vulcan starship in Starfleet (like the USS Intrepid, a curious name for a Vulcan ship), or all-Andorian space stations... but it's not like they're anonymous Andorians that just happened to offer you a computer overhaul in the middle of space, and you accepted because it was cheap and you had a coupon!
DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars.
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"OHNOES! THERE'S NO PLACE TO LAND OUR SUPERTECHNOLOGICAL ALIEN-ENHANCED VTOL AIRCRAFT!"
TITLE: Wolverine: Weapon X (Marvel).
ISSUE: 16.
CULPRIT: Jason Aaron (writer).
DISSECTION: I just picked up the most recent issue because I knew it was a Nightcrawler tribute; and Kurt's one of my favorite X-Men. I liked the story; I really dug what Jason Aaron, the writer, was getting at... however, wasn't there another way to force Logan to make an effort to deliver the piano? Did you need to say there was no airstrip on which to land a Blackbird? X-Men aircraft have been consistently shown as having VTOL capabilities, and they can also hover; being enhanced by Sh'iar technology, and the work of people like Forge.
DISSECT-O-METER: 10 Bazzars. Also, Angel's eyes are curiously blank, and Wolverine's eyes are colored brown.
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146=6.4
Even with a hundred and forty six dissections, the average was... well, average, at 6.4 Bazzars. Sorry this column is not as good as usual; not only I've done it in a hurry, but it's also been fragmented and my attention has been crap because on Sunday my cat was killed by the neighbors' dog, and I'm still depressed... But anyhoo, here are the Covers Of Each Week; for the week of 08/04, it's again Darwyn's Cook cover for The Murder Of King Tut:
Next, for the week of 08/11, a nice looking piece from Sky Doll: Lacrima Christy Collection #1, by the book's creators Alessandro Barbucci and Barbara Canepa:
Nothing striking, but the best of that week. From 08/18, the last issue of the regular Star Wars: Legacy series, by co-creator Jan Duursema, and Sean Cooke:
Yes, not one of the best covers ever either, but it's a nice bookend for this series. Good thing there'll be at least one miniseries continuing the story, as I'm more interested in going forward with the story of the Star Wars universe than with exploring its past (unless it's Rebellion or New Republic eras). Last, from 08/25, another nice painting by Whilce Portacio for X-Men Legacy:
I wish he could do this kind of stuff inside the book... Now, Moments Of The Week... first, from 08/04, Lobo flaunts his bling:
Scary... Next, the villain in Metaba... err, S.H.I.E.L.D.?
Why, of course, Isaac Newton! I was hoping it'd be Edison... Now, from the interest "Last Family Of Krypton" mini, Lex being Lex:
Bastard. And from that same book, this is how Kryptonians do make-up sex:
Now, from 08/11, Bart gives the best possible eulogy for Comic Book Guy:
Good one. Next, Tony Stark, fashion disaster:
MY EYES!!! MY EYES!!! And now, why shapeshifters are evil:
MY EYES!!! MY EYES!!! MY SOUL!!! MY SOUL!!! Next, Blade, as played by the Wayans Brothers:
It still made me laugh. From 08/18, things are tough in the sidekick/pilot market, in this economy:
That brought a big smile to my face. Next, the foreshadowing started in Ex Machina #1 was indeed about something gloom:
Gaaaah!!! Over in the UK, Hughie disappoints me:
Stella? A Belgian beer? Yes, it's pretty common over there, but still... Next up, legacy heroes have to be true to their legacy:
Power Man? Check. Cheesy? Check. Speaking of Legacy, my favorite character from Star Wars: Legacy, Antares Draco, goes down in a blaze of glory:
Just as a note, he's not a red-skinned-black-inked Sith; that's just a disguise, this is his usual look, and he actually went down fighting his former master (now a Sith), but this was the cooler moment to show. Next, Spider-Man, nerdgasming:
Like a true schoolgirl of nerdiness. To finish this week, you know who you should not mess with?
That's John Walker, aka the U.S.Agent, now warden of The Raft. You know what happens if you mess with him?
This. Even missing an arm and a leg, he's got superpowers and combat training, you idjits. Now two moments from 08/25, first up, Kirby flashback!
Courtesy of Butch Guice. And last, Amadeus Cho ascends to godhood:
Not quite as I expected he'd look... That's it for now, until next time, I'll be on the outlook for more dissections, because (almost) nothing escapes...
THE DISSECTOR!
