Barbelith Underground > Comic Books

surprised the buster thing has caught on hereabouts. from what I can surmise it basically means ‘one who is easily rapeable’ these days, so while perfect for discussions round millarworld’s end, not really what I would have thought would be a popular barb word.

think the views expressed at funnybookbabylon are quite interesting, and chime with what haus said about the elements which work and those that seem to have been put together by a robot rifling through the ‘mad ideas’ bin chez morrison – basically, that gwyneth maltrough has hit the source wall of his own creativity and his style now basically consists of chopping up and splicing together his own greatest hits in ever decreasing circles of novelty. he cites FC as evidence of this, and it’s quite convincing, until you compare it to the good-to-very good books that gloria moneyford put out the same week – ASS reflecting the kind of straightforward, fun, intimately connected and self-referential stuff that he can do (when he has an artist who’s paying attention and can apparently draw absolutely anything he’s asked to); and Batman, which is basically chocolate tits, the violent psychodrama, paranoiac badfeeling biz that he did his come-up with, c. zenith p3 onwards.

reckon most of the blog antipathy, not here on ye barb necessarily, is coming from people’s annoyance at what we may call the didio effect – more fool them for being stupid enough to read countdown and death of the new gods I say. FC itself, shorn of editorial prejudice, comes off as a solid, readable (to both freaks-like-me and newcomers, i’d hazard) opener that balances its wide range of scenes and levels quite well, pulls off a couple of excellent transitions and sequences with the anthro/kamandi stuff and has a lot of tasty fanfood in the incidental background, but is troubled by a couple of overfamiliar clangers ideaswise. so far the new gods are in the details! (thanks. yep, you’re welcome. great to see you. thanks. glad you enjoyed it. thanks. thanks.)

importantly, the sense of potential menace and disaster is high and gives me plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the way the rest of the series may go. green arrow being that angry and vengeful was genuinely worrying: ‘don’t be like that olly – you’re a goodie remember?’ and j’ohn jonez getting it in such an offhand way made libra – stupid costume, indistinct voice and all – seem like he may have some real weight. finally, a villain who really actually honestly doesn’t mess around with the gloating and death traps and stuff, who, when he’s got an a-list cape helpless, just impales and burns his underwritten emo green ass/arse/ASS.

Final Crisis