DISCLAIMER (angry creators, please read)
[[WARNING! THIS COLUMN MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS!]]
"Science to the rescue once more!" Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man #643.
Late, late again, I know. Work has been hectic... you know, the work that actually pays my bills? Doesn't mean I'll let my readers down, though! Nobody cracked last column's DT; and I can tell you (while I watch Stargate Universe) that it was the fact that the Jaffa says he was the Prime of Sobek, but he had no tattoo on his forehead, as all Jaffa in service to a Goa'uld should (in fact, his should be gold, as Prime).
Here are the Dissector's Picks Of The Week! Best Book Of The Week is actually a tie between X-Factor #209 and Captain America: Patriot #1. In X-Factor, Peter David is an excellent team book writer, and any character he doesn't have previous experience with, he studies and gets. Newcomer Emanuela Lupacchino's art is crisp and clear, making characters different and with great facial expressions... she does have a bit of room for improvement still, mainly in background figures. For the Patriot book, Karl Kesel is a veteran character writer, and he gets the 40s dialogue and feel perfectly. For a book with a lot of narration (in the form of newspaper articles), it reads easily. Artist Mitch Breitweiser, with colorist and wife Bettie Breitweiser, draw a story that's both modern and WWII... like a (good) propaganda poster come to life.
Worst Book Of The Week was Justice Society Of America Special... wow, this was a bad book. Not horrible, but just... failed. Scott Kolins writes as well as pencils, and as much as I don't really like his art, his writing is even worse. The plot is disjointed, the dialogues are wooden... and his art, well, his figures are not that well suited to superheroes, in my opinion, particularly because of the bright colors Hi-Fi gives them. Haven't read this? Don't read it, unless you’re a big JSA fan.
The Rundown: Avengers And The Infinity Gauntlet (Doom's eyes are colored incorrectly, Wolverine's height is wrong), Battlefields ("formate"?), Birds Of Prey V3 ("muy" thai?), DC Universe Legacies (accented letters), Justice Society of America Special ("tyrrany", Magog's eyes are both normal, and one has an Horus symbol around it, which has never been there before, nor his powers have any Egyptian basis), Our Fighting Forces (Johnny Cloud's eyes shouldn't be blue, wrong uses of the German language), Shadowland: Power Man (accented letter that's a flat line and a small letter, then a correctly accented letter on all counts; plus a weird name for a Hispanic character, which gets a low rating, but it's more probable than "Ignatio" was Van Lente trying to spell "Ignacio", rather than the right name he was looking for), Spider-Man/Fantastic Four (accented letter), Web Of Spider-Man V2 (accented letters, but one correct... I mean, individual letterers can get it right in one book, wrong in another, and now wrong and right within pages? come on, pay more attention to your own work!), Young Allies (inconsistent credit lettering, accented letters, opening question marks missing from Spanish dialogues, when opening exclamation marks are used for other dialogues).
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"THIS EACH WRONG."
TITLE: The Dissector (Studio Robota).
ISSUE: 177.
CULPRIT: MaGnUs (writer).
DISSECTION: Donald313 noticed that I wrote "Batman and Alfred treat is other is just plain wrong", it should have been "each other". Badge for him.
DISSECT-O-METER: 4 Bazzars.
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"DISSECTOR CORPS."
TITLE: Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors (DC).
ISSUE: 02.
CULPRIT: Peter Tomasi (writer).
DISSECTION: One for the Green Lantern fans:
DISSECT-O-METER: 6 Bazzars. Also, Kilowog's badge and ring are wrong, then his badge changes shape. On the other hand, Guy, Arisia, and Kilowog are shown flying out on an extended trip to the "unknown sector" without their power batteries visible... are we supposed to believe they're going away for a long time without their batteries? Obviously, they carry them inside their rings. So stop using the lazy "ring charge--low!" plot device, please.
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"QUO FUCKING VADIS?"
TITLE: Ides Of Blood (DC/Wildstorm).
ISSUE: 02 of 06.
CULPRIT: Stuart C. Paul (writer).
DISSECTION: Okay, the anachronistic language has gone too far. I can't let something like "HAIL @#$%ING CAESAR." pass without considering it a fucking dissection.
DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars. Plus, there is also a phrase that, apart from using the word "fart", repeats parts of itself without apparent reason.
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"SPIRIT OF DISSECTION."
TITLE: The Spirit V1 (DC).
ISSUE: 15.
CULPRIT: Paul Smith (penciller) and/or Sergio Aragones & Mark Evanier (writers).
DISSECTION: Donald313 strikes back again, and lets me know that in this issue, from April 2008, a beauty pageant contestant is announced as Ms. Japan, but she's wearing a "Ms. China" sash. You get another badge, and you earned your promotion to Commander! Congratulations! That's your twenty-sixth badge; reach forty-one and you make Captain, and get your own ship to command!
By the way, you say you weren't reading the column back then, in 2008, and you asked if it existed. The column was first published in 2005, in CBEM #549 (here's a link to a re-posting of the first one); and then in blog form since December 2006.
DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars.
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"DICE OFF!"
TITLE: X-Factor V1 (Marvel). Yes, I went back to V1, like with other renumber/continuation books.
ISSUE: 209.
CULPRIT: David Yardin (cover penciller).
DISSECTION: I can't believe I didn't notice this one... I'm ashamed, as a roleplayer, that I missed this one... but luckily, my new aide-de-camp, HDSC Commander Donald313, had my back. The cover shows Longshot playing craps; and one of the dice he throws has the numbers 2 and 5 on adjoined faces; when they should be on opposite ones; as each pair of opposite faces in a six-sided die should add up to seven.
Plus, I know now that "die" in German is "Würfel"... and the plural is "Würfels"... nice.
DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars. Also, Madrox's eyes are colored green, when they should be brown.
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Thirty-four dissections, and a 6.0 Bazzar average... on the low end of the usual. Cover Of The Week is by Yuko Shimizu, for The Unwritten:
A board game? The issue actually turns out to be a choose your own adventure books! Now, Moments of The Week; first one's a gay fashion showdown in old west:
That made me chuckle... Next, another smile, but this time from Spidey:
Not just one, but two... and this one he shares with an unlikely companion:
Doom's a trekkie? Hah! Now, you know what I said about Lupacchino's art? Well, take a look at this:
Wolfsbane's never looked that good. And Lupacchino also makes the casino scenes very fun:
She's perfectly suited for a fun book like X-Factor. And here's the last scene from Captain America: Patriot:
Powerful, isn't it? That's it for now, until next time, I'll be on the outlook for more dissections, because (almost) nothing escapes...
THE DISSECTOR!
8 comments:
What no DT???
Ignore that.
I thought the GLC DT was just a dissection by your good self, sir!
On closer examination I would now offer up -
Jordan and Stewart are the nominated Lanterns for 2814. Rayner & Gardner are Honor Guard or Honor Corps or something, with a roving commission. They ORIGINATE from 2814 but do not currently SERVE there.
On a side note, the whole 'you are the lantern of sector XYZ' has never worked. Johns & DC ed even admitted as much when they 'lifted the prohibition on Lanterns teaming up' (not that it was ever consistently enforced). Anyone have any ideas how the Corps structure could be consistently and plausibly written instead?
Gah, should have noticed the lack of tattoos---got distracted thinking there might be something wrong with their staffs.
For this week's DT, Guy Gardner's rocking some nice pre-Silver Age amnesia. Let's assume Alan Scott doesn't count, since he wasn't properly a member of the corps. And he says "guys," so maybe he's intentionally not counting Jade for some vaguely misogynistic reason (also, she was picked by Kyle, not the Guardians/rings). He's still a dope.
The four current, overlapping Lanterns from Earth are the only Earthlings (other than Jade and/or Alan) to be Green Lanterns. Hence Sinestro's snide comments about Earth when Hal was being trained. But they're absolutely not the only 4 people to watch over Earth. Lanterns are assigned sectors, not individual planets; the previous Lanterns of sector 2814 just weren't from Earth. Most notably, there was Abin Sur, who gave the dang ring to Hal in the first place, so you'd think Guy could remember him. Big pink fellow from outer space apparently doesn't leave much impression.
Then again, considering it's Guy Gardner talking, it's hard to say whether this is a writing dissection or just Guy being a doofus.
Darryn, yeah it's the Honor Guard; Kyle and Guy are Honor Guard lanterns. And I like the sector thingy; but they can team up and overlap whenever they need it. Kinda like real cops.
David: Guy's just being his dicky self, and a bit figurative. It's not a dissection at all, except for the Honor Guard thing.
Thanks for reading, guys!
David, there have been other Earthlings -
http://glcorps.dcuguide.com/profile.php?name=danielyoung
http://glcorps.dcuguide.com/profile.php?name=waverlysayre
I knew about Daniel Young and Waverly Sayre, but they were not chosen by the Guardians. There's also Charlie Vickers, but while he was t chosen by the Guardians, he was stationed in sector 3319, not 2814.
And originally, neither guy nor John were chosen by the Guardians, but by Hal.
By the way, the plural of "Würfel" is "Würfel". 1 Würfel + 1 Würfel = 2 Würfel. No Plural-S there. The act of throwing dice is "würfeln". Sounds funny now that I think about it.
"I want you to die" obviously translates to "Ich will, dass du würfelst".
Sorry, it's the genitive I got it confused with.
http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/W%C3%BCrfel
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