I thought about doing a best-of-'97 year-in-review this month. Looking back though, I realized my column is generally positive (the lowest grade I've given out is a single D), and I've already told you about the books I've liked this year. Meanwhile, this week, my back's bothering me, "Riven" won't work on the computer, the modem is playing mindgames with me, the car is broken, and too much was spent on Christmas presents. In other words, I'm feeling cranky. So let's look at the worst of '97. Here are a few items which bothered me. Keep in mind, many more awful comics exist than you'll find listed here; these are only the ones I had the misfortune of reading.

 p.s. I couldn't help it. I had to slip in some positive reviews. Skip on down to QUANTUM & WOODY and MILK AND CHEESE if you want to find the good stuff.
 

GENESIS #1-4 (DC Comics)
THE GOTHIC SCROLLS: DRAYVEN #1 (DAVDEZ Arts, Inc.)
LUST FOR LIFE #1-3 (Slave Labor Graphics)
SPECTACLES #1-3 (Alternative Press)
SPIDER-MAN: THE MANGA #1-2 (Marvel Imports/Marvel Comics)
TZU THE REAPER #1-2 (Murim Studios & Jak Hak Lee Productions)

GENESIS was the worst crossover event in a year of many awful crossover events. Marvel's "Heroes Reborn" universe actually had the gall to perpetrate three major crossover events in its closing months. "Heroes Reunited" was passable only because of the audacity of the heroes' failure resulting in the destruction of the Earth not once -- not twice -- but three times! -- with Dr. Doom and his time machine pulling their fat out of the fire each time. "World War 3" and its crossover with the heroes of Jim Lee's WildStorm Universe was inoffensive and forgettable. HEROES REBORN: THE RETURN was acceptable only because it finally put an end to the whole farce and returned the Avengers, Fantastic Four, Iron Man and Captain America to their regular continuities. Bad as they were, all the Marvel crossovers look like Shakespeare when compared to the atrocity which was DC's GENESIS.

 How could such talented creators go astray? I've been a longtime member of John Byrne's "Faithful Fifty" -- the fifty thousand readers who follow Byrne from title to title. I've found him to be one of the most consistent writer/artists working in comics. Yet with GENESIS, Byrne's writing bottomed out. Despite the individual talents of penciler Ron Wagner and inker Joe Rubinstein, their styles failed to mesh in GENESIS, resulting in a rough, sketchy mess that sent the book even lower in my esteem.

GENESIS was sound and fury, signifying nothing. A "God wave" which had rolled through the universe at the beginning of time creating all the gods of mythology, was sweeping back through the universe depressing everyone. Yes, that's right, it made everyone depressed. Oooh, catastrophic! Allegedly, it forever altered the powers of many DC Universe superheroes and could have resulted in the end of the universe or somesuch. I can't remember a single change, however, except a bunch of DC Comics in which everyone sat around acting mopey. Actually, I'm hard pressed to remember much else about GENESIS. For my own protection, I seem to have blocked it from my memory. Of course, that's probably for the best.

 To close off this rant, I want to take time to make a gratuitous slam: I despise the work of Jack Kirby. GENESIS and JACK KIRBY'S FOURTH WORLD are only the most recent failures to feature the brainchildren of Kirby. The late Kirby's blocky art was barely tolerable, but his writing was the epitome of bad. The New Gods, Mr. Miracle, and the Forever People were lousy creations. Lousy! I can't believe DC keeps trying to revive the characters year after year with new creative teams, only to cancel their comics every time. DC, catch a clue and let these characters fade away. Or perhaps . . . kill them off in an crossover event???
 
 

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Grade: F

THE GOTHIC SCROLLS: DRAYVEN is about a vampire -- yet another soulsearching vampire who is capable of speaking in only the most purple of prose. And in this case, it's particularly poor purple prose. Each caption and word balloon is painful to read. Writer/artist David Hernandez' artwork would be passable on most pages if not for the atrocious coloring by Rich Ponder and Eric Needle. To top it off, the book's cover logo is impossible to decipher unless you already know the title -- and even then it's hard!

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Grade: D-

The title of LUST FOR LIFE is ironic because the characters in this comic display absolutely no lust for life. Instead, they are stereotypical slackers, floating through life with no purpose. The stories by writer/artist Jeff Levine are told almost entirely in captions -- long, droning captions. Half the book is given over to a text piece -- page after page of monotonous diary entries illustrated with full-page still life studies of furniture, kitchenware, bathroom tubs, streets and buildings. There are some insights and moments of consequence buried in there somewhere, but mining for them is a chore I'm going to forego in the future.
 
 

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Grade: D-

SPECTACLES is another example of the over-written, under-drawn comic book. Huge blocks of text and massive word balloons crowd the art into narrow slivers in most panels. There's nothing fatally wrong with this approach, but it doesn't capitalize on the major strength of comic books: the dynamic interaction of words and pictures. When a creator chooses this approach, he'd better be damned certain to fill the blocks of text with some amazing and entertaining prose. Writer/artist Jon Lewis fails to do so.

 Lewis fills SPECTACLES with dull, slice-of-life vignettes and surrealistic fantasy serials that fall short of being actual stories. Writer Leo Geistler contributes an occasional story, but does little better than Lewis in achieving a point. Lewis' crude and sketchy art verges on being intriguing, but falls mostly into the realm of the unremarkable. It all amounts to nonsense -- time-wasting nonsense.
 
 

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Grade: F

SPIDER-MAN: THE MANGA crushed my expectations. The concept of the book seemed bold: When Marvel exported Spider-Man to Japan, they let a very talented Japanese writer/artist tell original stories of a young Japanese teen named Yu Komori who gains the powers of Spider-Man. This wasn't just a translation of Marvel's massive Spider-Archive, it was new material for a different culture. The boldness of the concept is undermined when editor Tom Brevoort tells us in the afterword to the first issue that Marvel's attempt at a straight translation of American stories in Japan was a sales flop. The original Japanese stories were necessary because the Japanese readers didn't like the American tales. Well, it's a two-way street, because I don't like the Japanese tales.

 I love Ryoichi Ikegami's artwork on CRYING FREEMAN, MAI THE PSYCHIC GIRL, and SANCTUARY (all published by Viz Communications). Alas and alack, SPIDER-MAN: THE MANGA was produced long before any of those books and long before Ikegami had honed his talents. Though crude and cartoonish, the art in SPIDER-MAN: THE MANGA does show Ikegami's potential. The writing, however, is dreadful. I assume that this work was intended for children, because the writing is simplistic to the point of being insulting. Most word balloons are just descriptions of what is happening in the artwork on the page (e.g., "I tried to block his punch but lost control of my strength and hit that metal beam." Issue #1, p.11). Even worse, the pivotal reason for Spider-Man's existence -- the death of Uncle Ben through Peter Parker's own negligence -- is not included in the Japanese version. Instead, the Japanese Spider-Man is simply trying to raise money to pay his girlfriend's mother's hospital bills. I'm not sure if this abysmal writing is the fault of Ikegami, the translators Mutsumi Masuda and Dan Nakrosis, American and Japanese cultural differences, or a combination of all the above. Whatever the cause, SPIDER-MAN: THE MANGA has been stricken from my subscription list.
 
 

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Grade: F

TZU THE REAPER is summed up in one word: murky. The story, the art, the characters: murky, murky, murky. The most joy I have gotten out of the book is seeing murky written three times in a row just now describing it. TZU THE REAPER is one of the few color comic books I've seen that might look better in black and white. But I still wouldn't read it.
 
 

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Grade: F

(In this space, I usually tell if the reviewed comics are available in PREVIEWS this month or if they have an associated web site. With these comics, who cares?)

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QUANTUM & WOODY: "The Director's Cut" TPB Vol.1 (Acclaim Comics)
QUANTUM & WOODY #5-8 (Acclaim Comics)

Acclaim Comics admits that Quantum & Woody are the world's worst superhero team. Heck, Acclaim boldly prints it right on the cover of QUANTUM & WOODY each month. And Acclaim has every reason to be proud, because the exploits of the world's worst superhero team make for one of the better superhero team comics being published today.

 Creators Christopher Priest and M. D. Bright have been toiling in the superhero genre for years with little acclaim. Bright is one of those artists with a rock-solid middle-of-the-road style that lacks excitement but is of consistent high quality. He worked on DC's GREEN LANTERN for a while and was just starting to come into his own on ICON (Milestone/DC Comics) when the whole Milestone line collapsed underneath him. Priest, The Writer Formerly Known as Jim Owsley, has been a DC mainstay. Under his two names he has written the 1988 UNKNOWN SOLDIER limited series, JUSTICE LEAGUE TASK FORCE, and THE RAY on-going series. All were series that I began collecting, found interesting for a short while, then dropped. After a time, I lost faith in Priest and would no longer buy comics written by him.

Imagine my chagrin when I confidently bought the first issues of X-O MANOWAR, NINJAK and SHADOWMAN based on the A-list writers attached to those books only to find all three underwhelmingly average. (See the February 1997 LWYBM for details.) Imagine how arrogantly I passed over QUANTUM & WOODY #1 because it was written by Christopher Priest. Imagine my surprise when Priest and Bright -- two men whom I had mentally ranked as second stringers -- delivered the only break-out title in Acclaim's relaunched Valiant Universe, garnering praise from all over the industry. Imagine my relief when Acclaim issued a trade paperback of the first issues, allowing me to finally play catch-up. You won't need to imagine how much I liked the book, because I'm about to tell you.

 Bunches. I like QUANTUM & WOODY bunches and bunches.

QUANTUM & WOODY is about two fellas who are best friends despite the fact that they hate each other. This superheroic Odd Couple are night and day. Where Eric "Quantum" Henderson is dapper, earnest, and grave, Woodrow "Woody" Van Chelton is Daffy, Ernie, and Grover. It is Woody who suggests they become superheroes when they receive energy powers. But it is Quantum who insists on code names, costumes, a secret laboratory, and hi-tech crimefighting weaponry. Quantum has an exercise regimen and studies regularly from a superhero "cheat book" containing information about defusing bombs and analyzing chemicals. (The cheat book is a tribute, I believe, to Huey, Dewey, and Louie's Junior Woodchucks' Guide Book, the container of the sum total of human knowledge and a very handy plot device.) Quantum is far from perfect however. He is often carried away by his eagerness to uncover byzantine plots and elaborate crimes, overlooking the simple, practical solutions occasionally presented by Woody.

 Regardless of their differences, Quantum and Woody are inextricably tied together in a Gordian knot of history and circumstance. They were childhood friends, brought together as infants because their fathers were business partners and friends. Woody abruptly disappeared during high school, and the two didn't meet again for fifteen years until their fathers died together in a suspicious helicopter crash. While investigating the deaths, the boys discover a pair of energy wristbands their fathers invented and squabble over them. Having divided the wristbands so they can each wear one, a small accident in their fathers' lab makes the wristbands unremovable. The kicker? If they don't whack the wristbands together once a day, Quantum and Woody turn to energy and begin to dissipate. As if life and death weren't a strong enough link, Quantum was named executor of Woody's father's estate and controls Woody's trust fund until Woody is forty-five.

 With a battle cry of "We're not a couple!" Quantum and Woody dive into the mean streets and confront villainy. Woody might stop for hot dogs if they have an extra minute or two on a ticking timebomb and flirt with pretty hostages during an armed standoff, but the duo is generally as effective as any other superhero team -- and ten times as funny. Creative use of flashbacks, dream sequences, breaking of the fourth wall, and title cards throughout the series add to the fun. And hey, they have a goat for a sidekick!

 I'm scrambling through back issue bins looking for the QUANTUM & WOODY comics I'm still missing. I'm adding QUANTUM & WOODY to my subscription list this month. Don't you think it's time you got started on these important tasks yourself?

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Grade: B+

(QUANTUM & WOODY #14 is solicited this month in PREVIEWS on page 35!)

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MILK AND CHEESE #1-7 (Slave Labor Graphics)

The worst role models in comics are a pair of dairy products gone bad. The carton of milk known as Milk and the wedge of cheese named Cheese are obnoxious, booze-swilling, ultraviolent bastards. Their attitudes are bad and their behavior is reprehensible. I'd hate them if only they weren't so darn cute and funny.

MILK AND CHEESE is a comic with a single joke: Milk and Cheese get annoyed at some person, group, or trend and then run around beating the snot out of everyone in sight. That's it. Every time. Milk and Cheese have clobbered fat people, comic book fans, Star Wars fans, old people, restaurant employees, the French, people with tattoos and piercings, cult members, renaissance fair attendees, and even their own creator. It's a testament to the incredible skill of writer/artist Evan Dorkin that he can keep this limited concept fresh and hilarious page after page. It helps that MILK AND CHEESE is measured out in small doses: issues are published 1-2 years apart and consist of several 2-6 page short stories.

 Frankly, I think Evan Dorkin is an underappreciated genius. Dorkin's writing and art complement each other perfectly: frenzied, yet sharp and pointed. His PIRATE CORP$/HECTIC PLANET series was humorous and twisted, evolving from science fiction into a slacker relationship comic. He even made Marvel's BILL & TED comic an enjoyable experience. His contributions to INSTANT PIANO (Dark Horse Comics) were the best part of that short-lived anthology. I eagerly anticipate the next installment of his DORK comic (Slave Labor Graphics) which collects old and original short works.

I can't think of any humorist working in comics today who even comes close to Dorkin. If you're looking for some honest-to-god belly laughs, snack on some MILK AND CHEESE this month and watch PREVIEWS closely for whatever project Dorkin does next.

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Grade: A-

(MILK & CHEESE : SIX SIX SIX #1 [a/k/a M&C #6] and MILK & CHEESE'S LATEST THING [a/k/a M&C #7] are resolicited by Amaze Ink/Slave Labor Graphics this month in PREVIEWS on page 195!)

(Evan Dorkin's personal web page is at http://www.houseoffun.com)

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