Happy Moonday, geeks and geekettes! Another weekend may have come and gone, but that doesn’t mean the fun has to end too. That being said, we’ve got one hell of a Monday Morning Stash for you today, including a review of one of the most talked-about new releases of the past week, a fun one-shot, and the launch of a whole new publishing house. Let’s get right to it, and talk about the hard stuff first, and not let the biggest news just flop around. Yes. We’re going to jump right in with…
@RobBex2
The Joker is dead and Batman can’t remember what happened.
BatPenis aside, this was DC’s Black Label launch and it’s a great one at that. Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo are a fantastic pairing. They are known for such great graphic novels like Joker and Luthor. They are both great at the crime noir feel and Azzarello is one of the best. He does play around just a bit with Batman’s childhood by implying that Thomas Wayne was having an affair and that the Enchantress might have had some involvement in Bruce’s future endeavors. Since this is turning out to be a story leaning heavily on the mystic, you can’t take a step without bumping into either John Constantine or Zatanna, who turns out to be a street card shark hustler.
Bermejo’s art is consistently beautiful and stunning. He captures the look of Batman, Bruce Wayne, Gotham, all of it, in such a realistic fashion and with a very distinct, unique look. There is just one panel that looks off and it’s the opening panel where Batman has been fatally stabbed and the blood looks Photoshopped in. Outside of that panel, the book is a beautiful piece of artwork. Now, yes, the first printing of the issue does have BatWang in it and DC is going to take it out from here on out, but that isn’t the reason you should pick this up. 4/5 BatWangs.
-Robert Bexar
Ahoy, matey!!! You’ve just treasure mapped your way into a dead man’s chest full of golden comic bounty!!! So…just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip, that started from this comic port, aboard this pirate’s grip…
Abundance. Humor. Originality. Yes. Yes, these words comprise the acronym from whence AHOY Comics has plundered its namesake. Captained by Publisher Hart Seely (National Lampoon), AHOY’s gone burly Blackbeard and shanghaied a motley crew of comic world rogues and rapscallions to bring hijinks and mayhem into the oft-conventionalized Seas of Stupor-Heroed Cheez… all to leave you drunkfully punched into Caribbean Rumdom with.
So…come along now, lasses and ladies, for an unfair maiden’s voyage aboard a sea-scaring vessel known as…The Wrong Earth #1…
Dragonflyman (imbued of a Green Hornet/The Tick costumed aesthetic), gives good old-days, wholesome, Boy Scout delivery with his overly-sanitized rhetoric, as his literally red-headed stepchild-like sidekick, Stinger, buffoons it through his best Boy Blundering schtick; watch as both of them go galavanting around in codpiece-smothering tights and gossamer wings, in order to fisticuff a numeral-obsessed supervillain and his ruffians into lawful subservience – all whilst our heroic twosome manage to elicit the oft-conjectured true love dynamic that may exist amongst more famous “crime-fighting” duos, such as: Batman and Robin, Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble, Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck, and Burt and Ernie from Sesame Street.
The adroitly monikered supervillain, Number One (a lounge lizard-looking meth-head in stripped pants and gaudy gold jewelry, who looks like he was fathered by Gene Simmons, of KISS, and Thurston Howell III, from Gilligan’s Island), and his literally-numbered henchwomen and henchmen (looking Harley Quinnian, cruise ship-costumed, and gimp-hooded, in their respective appearances), comprise an initial galore of goon gallery offerings; with visual allusions to other various DC and Marvel comics criminals, and James Bondian villains, alike. Further conflating this coterie of Pop culture pulchritude, comes the inevitable multiverse collision factor. Yes…that’s right!!! You’re getting more than one whirled in your comic peas here. Earth-Alpha, meet Earth-Omega. The Righteous, to the Wicked. Dragonflyman, meet Dragonfly. A superman, to one who likes to punish men. A Stinger in one world, but maybe not in the other. 4.25/5 Tear The Wings Off.
-Jason Bud
@mochaloca85
One week in November 2017, two suspiciously similar-looking groups of women made their main roster debuts on RAW and Smackdown Live. From that moment almost one year ago, the inspiration for this title was born. In this one-shot issue from BOOM! Studios, these pages feature the women of NXT (and a brief William Regal cameo). Writer Dennis Hopeless tries to provide an explanation for the cloned factions appearing post-Survivor Series and, well, it’s a better backstory than the actual backstory the WWE writers came up with.
Hopeless’s characterizations are spot-on: I heard the Iconic Duo’s lines in that weird sing-song tone that they use when cutting promos; and Paige pointing out that there wouldn’t be a Women’s Revolution without her was the most truth I’ve read…this week. So far, anyways. Hyeonjin Kim’s art is expressive and captures everyone’s faces wonderfully, which helps in the long run, since, in general, it’s a bit hard to translate wrestling to the printed page; however, it works here, and this was a pleasant surprise. 4/5 RamPaiges.
-Destiny Edwards