Nightmares Illustrated 019 What’s Wrong With The World?

by Wayne Edwards (Dec 26, 2011)

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Top Five Picks This Month…Buy These Right Now.

1. Red Lanterns #4 (DC).

2. Aquaman #4 (DC).

3. Resurrection Man #4 (DC).

4. Locke & Key Guide to Known Keys (IDW).

5. Spawn #214 (Image).

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Merry Christmas, Christians! I am an atheist myself and so I don’t celebrate religious holidays. But I have a lot Christian and Christianesque friends so a hearty Merry Christmas is in order and doesn’t hurt me at all. Just to annoy a bunch of you fence sitters out there, all you “Happy Holiday” people can go pound sand. Be more specific in your celebratory wishing. “Happy Holidays” is lazy. Say what you mean.

Here endeth the public service announcement.

Oh, one more: I am writing a New Year’s column, too, and it will probably be up hot on the heels of this one. All new and exciting content so both the Christmas and New Year’s editions are require reading!

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The Boys Volume 9 The Big Ride (Dynamite). This is a book that, while I don’t read it monthly, I always pick up as the issues are collected. Garth Ennis is one of my absolute favorite comic writers. The Boys, although not my favorite series of his, is just off-bubble enough to give you a gasp now and then. This collection, the apparent penultimate volume, holds the three recent arcs: “Proper Preparation and Planning,” “Barbary Coast,” and “The Big Ride.”

The Boys is all about hate for superheroes. The first panel in issue forty nine shows a superhero looking into a mirror and saying this to himself: “People are toys. They’re toys and they’re there for my amusement, and there’s not a thing more to them than that.” Well, there you go. That’s Ennis’s definition of superheroes’ p.o.v. for the book, and the namesakes are essentially fighting against the supes. Sprinkled intermittently with a sinister, twisted sense of humor, stunning episodes of graphic violence and sex, and all conceivable levels of depravity, The Boys lets you laugh at yourself for reading any superhero comics. Volume 9 is a bit more cerebral than earlier collections and has a good deal less sexual content overall (well, “The Big Ride” is chock full of sex and hatred and revenge, so that makes up for any lull in the other two). At first, that bummed me out a little, but the satirical writing is a beautiful thing. After reading it twice, it is clear to me that this collection is as solid as any of the others. Recommended.

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Vampirella Masters Series Volume Six (Dynamite). It is true that the content here is all reprinted not only from the comics but from the earlier Harris trade paperbacks. Even so, the “Blood Lust” mini is an exceptional story with absolutely stunning Joe Lusko artwork. If you have never read “Blood Lust,” buy this book now and read it. If you have read it before, buy this book now and read it again. If you already own the comics, buy this book anyway so you can read “Blood Lust” without getting the comics out of their bags. If you already have the Harris trade paperback (The Best of Vampirella, Volume 2, Modern Masterpieces), well then you maybe don’t need to get this new one. But you are the only group with an excuse not to buy volume six of Dynamite’s Vampirella Masters Series!

There are two other short pieces in the book, “Two So Different” and “Vampirella Vs. Dracula.” The latter sounds a lot better than it actually is—the artwork is primitive and the writing not too much better. “Two So Different,” on the other hand, features beautiful water color art by Ray Lago and James Robinson’s (who wrote all three pieces in the collection) writing is good enough, even though he suffers an unfortunate explosion of exposition. Even with the short-comings, this is a great collection and should not be missed by horror comics fans. Highly recommended.

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Absolute Sandman Volume Five (Vertigo). DC/Vertigo’s “Absolute” series is pure decadence: oversized reproductions of comics, frequently “remastered,” in hardcover and slipcased. I am stunned that people can actually afford to buy stuff like this—at $100, they are not exactly bargains. They are, however, absolutely beautiful.

Volume Five of the Sandman absolutes is a little bit of overkill. All the primary Neil Gaiman material has already been collected in the first four volumes so this one is essentially leftovers and peripheral extensions. The contents are: Sandman Midnight Theatre, The Sandman: Endless Nights, The Sandman: The Dream Hunters (including the source narrative), and “The Last Sandman Story” from Dust Covers: The Collected Sandman Covers. Individually, most of the material here is very good, but as a collection it is disjointed. This book does not rise to the level of the first four and so I only give it a recommendation for people who already have and cherish those earlier absolutes. You really, really have to into Gaiman’s Sandman in order to not feel bad plunking down an hundred bricks on Volume Five. But for you completests and addicts, there are more smiles here than furrowed brows.

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Buy These Too…

Elephantmen #36 (Image). Returning to the kind of book I liked so much a couple years ago, #36 starts a new violent and sexy arc, “The Killing Season.” There are also two back-up serials, “Patient Zero” and “Charlie Loves Robots,” the former being darkly humorous and the latter being goofy. Elephantmen is one of the few $3.99 comics worth the money.

Hellblazer #285 (Vertigo). The “trench coat” arc is wearing me down, but it is still worth reading while we wait for the new one to start with 287. Also, keep an eye out for the Hellblazer Annual #1 which I will be reviewing next time. For now, let’s just pretend to be interested in how Constantine will get is coat back.

Ghost Rider #6 (Marvel). The new volume is not all that I had hoped for, but if you are a Ghost Rider fan it’ll give you a fix. Alejandra’s first solo adventure is a doozy in this self-contained issue that starts a little slowly before ending with a pristine rush.

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