The Dissector #150.

DISCLAIMER (angry creators, please read)

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

"Guy swears his satellite TV gets a channel from Hell. Trouble is, how would you tell?" John Constantine, John Constantine, Hellblazer: Pandemonium.

Last weekend to vote on the Autopsy Awards, folks! For now, we'll go with the column for comics released on 02/10. JohnnyDoe cracked the DT! from last week, Vicki Vale says "...generous to Gotham over time years, but...", when it should have been "over the years" or "over time". Badge for you, man.

Best Book Of The Week was Secret Six #18; conclusion to the Secret Six/Suicide Squad Blackest Night "team up", or rather, the Ostrander/Simone writing team up. Good story, good art, good Black Lantern disposal, and good memories. And the Moment Of The Week that really made my jaw drop, see at the end of the column. Worst Book Of The Week was Action Comics 886, with a boring Kryptonian mythological story, told as a sort of illustrated bible with lots of narration boxes, more like a storybook than a comic book... ACTION. COMICS. That clue you in, Rucka & Trautmann? I like both of you as writers (and Trautmann is a great guy, never talked to Rucka), but this issue was too dense, too wordy, for this book.

The Rundown: Action Comics (Hal Jordan's badge), The Amazing Spider-Man Presents: Jackpot (the color and shape of the vials containing a drug and a sweat sample are exchanged between pages, accented letter), Angel (Spike's eyes are colored brown, then change to his correct blue), Batgirl V3 (a section of Gotham is described as a DMZ, when it's not), Booster Gold V2 (time "linie"?), Dark X-Men (Norman's eyes, Dark Beast described as "cat people"), Green Arrow/Black Canary (Hal Jordan's badge, and Wally West's eyes through his mask are mentioned, when you can't see his eyes), John Constantine, Hellblazer: Pandemonium (accented letter), The Phantom Double Shot: KGB Noir (speech balloon pointing to wrong character), S.W.O.R.D. (BEAST AGAIN!!!! And Italian dialogue is wrong), Secret Six V3 (Rick Flag's eyes are colored incorrectly), Strange V2 (Doc Strange can't get his eyes colored correctly even in his own book), X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back (accented letter). Dissections?
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"ADVENTURE DISSECTION."

TITLE: Adventure Comics (DC).

ISSUE: 510.

CULPRIT: Tony Bedard (writer).

DISSECTION: Check this one out, it should be pretty simple.


DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars. Also, when Superboy reminisces about joining the Teen Titans, there's a character in the gathering that's unidentified... and shouldn't be there.
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"TAKE AWAY THE BEST PART OF HER COSTUME, WILL YA?"

TITLE: JSA All-Stars (DC).

ISSUE: 03.

CULPRIT: Freddie Williams II (artist) and Richard & Tanya Horie (colorists).

DISSECTION: Power Girl's uniform ample (for lack of a better word) cleavage, or "twindow", as a reader of this column named it, is missing completely. Her Kryptonian Knockers are completely covered up.

DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars. Also, Magog's eye is colored incorrectly, and Hourman's eye changes color midway through the backup story.
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"MIRAGE CONTACTS."

TITLE: New Mutants V3 (Marvel).

ISSUE: 10.

CULPRIT: Sotocolor (colorist).

DISSECTION: Why does Mirage, a Native American, keep getting her eyes colored green or blue? Green in this case.

DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars. Also, they keep neglecting to mention Magik's magical abilities in the character round up.
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"NOTHEED."

TITLE: Tails Of The Pet Avengers (Marvel).

ISSUE: One-shot.

CULPRIT: Humberto Ramos (cover artist).

DISSECTION: Lockheed is drawn with segmented plate skin, and a finger (not just pointy claws) on each of his wings. Wrong character design, I have him on my arm, I should know.

DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars.
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"DAS BOOT II."

TITLE: X-Men Forever V2 (Marvel).

ISSUE: 17.

CULPRIT: Chris Garcia (colorist).

DISSECTION: Rogue's boots are colored yellow in the story, as they were in the previous issue. Cover colorist Moose Baumann gets them right, coloring them green. Thanks to artist Graham Nolan, who in this issue draws Rogue's boots as ripped with the transformation.

DISSECT-O-METER: 6 Bazzars. Also, Beast and Mystique have their eyes colored wrong, and in Beast's case, drawn wrong too. (Again, yes, I know "Das Boot" is not "The Boot".)
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This week gives us a 6.5 Bazzars average in thirty dissections. Now, Cover Of The Week is the following piece from the first issue of the new Human Target book:


This nice piece by Redondo, Sandoval, Rench, and Abbot reminds me of the Steranko covers for the 70s Nick Fury books. Moments Of The Week? Remember I said one from Suicide Squad... err, Secret Six had made me gape?


Yeah, he finally did it. No, he didn't kill her, but instead lodged a bullet near her heart so it can't be removed through surgery. I really don't buy that last part, not with all the medical science in the DCU, but still, it was fun. Killing her would have been too easy for Floyd. Then, Norman Osborn For President?


Well, he is not a crook, is he? And for a finale, Beast wishes for a team up... with Spidey, perhaps? Wonder Man once again? Nope:


That’s who you want to team up when you battle sentient rock aliens. That's it for now, until next time, I'll be on the outlook for more dissections, because (almost) nothing escapes...

THE DISSECTOR!

The Dissector #149.

DISCLAIMER (angry creators, please read)

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

"Yes, Elsa Bloodstone, look deep into my dark and mysterious eyes. Hear The Cure cue up in the background and see me, see the real me for the awesome, dangerous, stud that I am!" N'Kantu, The Living Mummy, Marvel Heartbreakers.

Not listening to The Cure, though I like them, but here are the dissections from comics released on 02/03. I'm going to give you one more week to vote in the Autopsy Awards, so if you haven't voted, go ahead. Now, last week's DT! was spotted by Lt. Cmdr. JohnnyDoe (good to see you around, buddy); and it was obviously the fact that "Damocles" was spelled "Damacles". Badge for you!

The Dissector's Picks Of The Week are the following: Best Book Of The Week was The Boys #39, which shows us how Ennis can write an engaging issue of this book without having any blood or guts in it. The Question #37, part of the Blackest Night resurrected (or should I say "undead"?) books almost made it to Best Book, but you'll see below why it didn't. Worst Book Of The Week (and I just typed "World" instead of "Week", but it's THAT bad) was Red Tornado #6. The entire mini is drivel, not only in the way the story is written, but also because writer VanHook doesn't even bother to check how the powers or physiology of the characters he writes, not even when it comes to his book's star.

The (very short this week) Rundown: Blackest Night: Wonder Woman (Hal Jordan's badge is wrong), Doom Patrol V5 (Rita Farr's eyes are, once again, green, when they should be brown), Marvel Heartbreakers (Beast is given solid, yellow eyes), Siege (Ares' eyes are colored incorrectly, as are Jarvis' eyes and hair, and he doesn't look like he should).
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"A QUESTION OF BULLSHIT."

TITLE: The Question V1 (DC).

ISSUE: 37.

CULPRIT: Dennis O'Neil & Greg Rucka (writers).

DISSECTION: I CALLETH BULLSHIT!!! I was so happy to have a Question issue in the Blackest Night series of undead books, and I wasn't disappointed... until the end of the issue. Like I mentioned it before, it was almost Best Book Of The Week; with Denny O'Neil and Greg Rucka, the 80s and modern writers of the Question, and art by Denys Cowan and Bill Sienkiewicz. A perfect blend of the old and new Question books (well, second feature now).

What disappointed me so much, exactly? Well, I like creative ways of dealing with Black Lanterns, like Booster Gold separating one from its ring via time travel, or Mogo liquefying them inside his core. However, in this case, it was too much not to call bullshit. Lady Shiva discovers that by "not feeling any emotions", the Black Lanterns can't see her.

Not only I refuse to believe that the Black Lanterns don't have actual senses of vision, and at least hearing, not to mention being basically unstoppable killing machines, but I have a hard time believing two other things. First, while I can buy that Renee Montoya might be able to pull off the same "emotional invisibility" trick as Shiva (since Vic Sage trained Renee), I can't believe Tot Rodor is capable of that. Second, I don't really buy that the Black Lantern using Vic's body would just... give up and leave.

DISSECT-O-METER: 10 Bazzars. Bullshit. Also, Shiva's eyes go from being black or dark brown to blue.
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"RED DISSECTION."

TITLE: Red Robin (DC).

ISSUE: 09.

CULPRIT: Christopher Yost (writer).

DISSECTION: Almost right off the bat (get it? "bat"), Dissect This!


DISSECT-O-METER: 3 Bazzars.
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"POOR VIXEN."

TITLE: Red Tornado V2 (DC).

ISSUE: 06 of 06.

CULPRIT: Kevin VanHook (writer).

DISSECTION: For the love of God, VanHook! Can't you at least read about the characters you're writing? Vixen cannot communicate with animals or use her powers to see through her eyes, never has been able too, don't just pull shit out of your ass.

DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars. It's plausible, but still, badly written.
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"BREATHING UP A TORNADO."

TITLE: Red Tornado V2 (DC).

ISSUE: 06 of 06.

CULPRIT: Kevin VanHook (writer).

DISSECTION: Red Tornado's "respiratory function" diminishes. He doesn't need to breathe, even if he has imitation organs (the word "proxy" is used incorrectly by VanHook).

DISSECT-O-METER: 9 Bazzars. And of course, letterer Sal Cipriano can't decide whether the book penciller's name (is it his last name? is he Brazilian and uses a pen name?) is "Luis" or "Luís".
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"MATANZA DEL IDIOMA ESPAÑOL."

TITLE: Zorro Matanzas (Dynamite).

ISSUE: 01 of 04.

CULPRIT: Don McGregor (writer).

DISSECTION: Well, this edition of an old, unpublished tale of Zorro, while not as horrible as the regular Zorro book in terms of misuse of the Spanish language, still has a couple of flaws. The most glaring Spanish flaw is the use of the word "ranchero" when they mean "rancho". As anyone who pays even a little attention can surmise, the first word means "rancher" and the second means "ranch".

DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars. Also, "buenas dias". "BUENOS DIAS"!!!!
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"SLAUGHTERING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE."

TITLE: Zorro Matanzas (Dynamite).

ISSUE: 01 of 04.

CULPRIT: Don McGregor (writer).

DISSECTION: ... and Matanzas can't handle the English language right either. Zorro warns Bernardo to not let a villain fool him with his "veneer of refinery". Gee, Don, wouldn't that be "refinedness"?

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars. McGregor also has Zorro refer to his cape as "dark blue", and colorist Sam Parsons colors Bernardo's hair white for a page, then reddish.
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Only eighteen dissections, that's a pretty low count... and a resounding 7.0 Bazzars in average. Cover Of The Week is this very European piece by Paul Grist, with colors by Phil Elliot.


Now, Moments Of The Week, first up, Frenchie finds a way to occupy the Female's time:


British comics? But *gasp* I thought he was French! Then, what's Oberon been doing since we last saw him?


Superhero moving! What's with the hair? And now, what is the future of baby cribs? Well, nurturing AIs blending great physicists and classic black 80s comedians:


And for a finish, I despise the Sentry, you know that, and now it turns out he can rip Ares in half?


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

THE DISSECTOR!

The Dissector #148.

DISCLAIMER (angry creators, please read)

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

"This is a Christian land, and we a Christian people, but that's not stopped the old gods from reminding us they exist." Hilda, about winter, Northlanders #24.

I'm terribly bored, so I'll make this quick. This is the column for comics released on 01/27, Donald313 noticed that in the DT!, Namorita's adoptive father (or doctor, whoever he was), should have been blue skinned; the Best Book Of The Week was Superman: Secret Origin #4, and the Worst Book Of The Week was Ultimate Comics Enemy #1; it wasn't bad, but I just abhor comics that use 22 pages to tell what could be told in 6 and draw out the story.

The Rundown? Fall of the Hulks: Red Hulk (wrong eye color on Banner), G.I. Joe Cobra II (wrong eye color for the Baroness), God Complex ("confessiond" instead of "confession"), Gotham City Sirens (Riddler's eyes and hair are colored incorrectly), Justice League Of America V2 (Hoshi Kimiyo's eyes are colored blue even though she's Japanese, and Hal Jordan's uniform is colored incorrectly for a panel) 7 8, Secret Warriors (Daisy Johnson's eyes are wrong), Star Trek: The Next Generation: Ghosts (a few coloring and art errors, Aranda's art is not as hideous this time around... still ugly, though), Super Friends V2 (one of Superman's hands is colored blue and the other red), Thor V1 (Doom's eyes should be brown, not blue, plus, why would he label a lab sample in English?), Ultimate Comics Enemy (Ben Grimm's uniform nametag should read "B. GRIMM" or just "GRIMM", not "Ben G."), World's Finest V3 (Batman's gloves are drawn incorrectly), X-Factor V3 (Mr. Fantastic's and M's eyes are colored incorrectly, a missing person sign in Latveria is in English), X-Men: Legacy (Magneto's power is said to depend on his blood iron... what?). Dissections? Yes. But vote on the Autopsy Awards, please.
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"TRANSBAT."

TITLE: Batman And Robin (DC).

ISSUE: 07.

CULPRIT: Janelle Siegel (assistant editor) & Mike Marts (editor).

DISSECTION: Batwoman and Batman's speech balloons are switched on one page. Letterer Pat Brosseau says in his Facebook page that he was sure it was okay when he handed it in, so I'm going to take his word for it.

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars.
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"DISSECTION IN THE 25TH CENTURY!"

TITLE: Buck Rogers (Dynamite).

ISSUE: 08.

CULPRIT: Scott Beatty (writer).

DISSECTION: Come on, this one's easy:


DISSECT-O-METER: 6 Bazzars.
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"NO CULPRIT."

TITLE: The Dissector (Studio Robota).

ISSUE: 147.

CULPRIT: MaGnUs (writer).

DISSECTION: Donald313 gets his second badge today, he noticed I had missed the culprit in a dissection (Brian Michael Bendis, writer for Spider-Woman).

DISSECT-O-METER: 5 Bazzars.
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"DIFFERENT-LEE."

TITLE: Green Lantern V4 (DC).

ISSUE: 50.

CULPRIT: Jim Lee (variant cover penciller).

DISSECTION: Interior pages artist Dough Mankhe gets Hal Jordan's badge right... or at least, close enough, even though he changes it around from page to page. However, Jim Lee fucks it up big time.

DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars. Also, the Scarecrow's eyes are colored incorrectly.
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"DO ANDROIDS GET HIGH ON ELECTRIC SHIT?"

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

ISSUE: 06 of 07.

CULPRIT: James Robinson (writer).

DISSECTION: WTF? How does Prometheus use drugs on Red Tornado, who is a robot? Was he out of computer viruses or EMPs?

DISSECT-O-METER: 10 Bazzars. There are other costuming, coloring, lettering and writing/editing dissections too.
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"A MAN AHEAD OF HIS TIME."

TITLE: Northlanders (DC/Vertigo).

ISSUE: 24.

CULPRIT: Brian Wood (writer).

DISSECTION: This is a book set in Nordic lands in what, the 10th century? The 11th? The exact date really doesn't matter; but Thorir, one of the characters, urges a girl to eat meat because "growing children need protein". Protein? Really?

Wikipedia says: Proteins were first described by the Dutch chemist Gerhardus Johannes Mulder and named by the Swedish chemist Jönsla Jakob Berzelius in 1838. The central role of proteins in living organisms was however not fully appreciated until 1926, when James B. Sumner showed that the enzyme urease was a protein.

So, how is a Norseman in the know this 600 years before proteins were even described? Wood could have had Thorir just say "growing children need meat".

DISSECT-O-METER: 10 Bazzars.
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"I KEEP CLOTHES ALL OVER THE CITY."

TITLE: Spider-Man: The Clone Saga (Marvel).

ISSUE: 05 of 06.

CULPRIT: Todd Nauck (penciller).

DISSECTION: Peter and Ben are at the former's house, presumably in Queens, assembling some furniture, when they get a call that MJ is going into labour (presumably in a hospital in Manhattan). They change into their Spider-Man (Spider-Men?) costumes to rush to the hospital, swinging through the city, but they're not carrying any kind of backpack with their civilian clothing inside... yet when Peter gets to the hospital's roof, there's a webbed bundle of clothes there. What gives?

DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars. Of course, Norman Osborn's eyes are colored incorrectly.
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"LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS."

TITLE: Superman V1 (DC).

ISSUE: 696.

CULPRIT: James Robinson (writer).

DISSECTION: The Science Police HQ is destroyed, and Lois Lane just starts to blab about Nightwing's (Chris Kent) and Clark Kent's identity in front of the Guardian (who might be aware of Superman's ID), but also in front of other officers, her father's military unit is around, etc.

DISSECT-O-METER: 9 Bazzars.
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"FLUID ENVIRONMENT."

TITLE: Teen Titans V3 (DC).

ISSUE: 79.

CULPRIT: Joe Bennett (main feature penciller).

DISSECTION: The rooms where Static is in his hometown change layout, new furniture appears, and the stuff around his computer monitor disappears.

DISSECT-O-METER: 10 Bazzars, I'm gonna count it as one. Also, Beast Boy cannot turn into a centaur, he can't turn into mythical creatures. I'm blaming both Bennett and writer Felicia D. Henderson, who doesn't sound like she's too familiar with the characters.
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"WHERE'S MY SRNYIGE?"

TITLE: Teen Titans V3 (DC).

ISSUE: 79.

CULPRIT: Yildiray Cinar (second feature penciller).

DISSECTION: A vial of adrenaline is labeled "andrenline". This kind of illiterate moron spells like that. What's next, "How is babby formed?", or what?.

DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars.
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"LANGUAGES FOREVER."

TITLE: X-Men Forever V2 (Marvel).

ISSUE: 16.

CULPRIT: Chris Claremont (writer).

DISSECTION: Nightcrawler says he was in "Der Jarnmarkt". There are a couple of things wrong with that. First, the right word is "Jahrmarkt". Second, that means "funfair", and Kurt was in a circus ("Zirkus"), even if you wanted to call it a "carnival", it'd be "Karneval".

DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars.
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"DAS BOOT."

TITLE: X-Men Forever V2 (Marvel).

ISSUE: 16.

CULPRIT: Graham Nolan (penciller).

DISSECTION: Rogue absorbs Nightcrawler's powers and appearance; her hands shift into three-fingered ones, breaking her gloves. However, her feet shift too, but her boots shift with her, even shifting from actual soled, cuffed boots into the sort of soft, aerialist boots Nightcrawler wears to use his wall climbing abilities. Rogues powers do not shift her clothes, ever.

(Yes, I know "Das Boot" actually means "The Boat"...)

DISSECT-O-METER: 9 Bazzars. Also, during the whole issue, Rogue's boots are colored yellow instead of green as they are in this costume, and there few eye coloring mistakes, and a couple of accented letters.
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If you look at how trigger happy I was this week (and believe me, the ratings in the rundown stuff are kind of similar), it's no surprise that the forty-nine dissections we had yielded a 7.3 Bazzars average. Hmm... Cover Of The Week is this excellent piece by the talented Skottie Young


Oz propaganda? Brilliant. Now, the Moments Of The Week. First up, Hal Jordan has an idea to defeat Nekron:


... I didn't say it was a good idea... Then, Bendis keeps showing how well he "gets" Spider-Man:


That's funny stuff... And last, but not least, how deep is the connection between the future Science Police and the current one?


Yeah, about half of its members and its leader are legionnaires... That's it for now, until next time, I'll be on the outlook for more dissections, because (almost) nothing escapes...

THE DISSECTOR!