Tim Lieder

104. Adventure Time vol 2 by Ryan North et al - I think I am bored with Adventure Time. I like this comic well enough. Time travel. Future dystopia. Lots of shenanigans with Princess Bubblegum (written around the time Finn and PB were a potential couple). But I think that the shine is off and I can't really get excited for these tricks anymore. Last year when Adventure Time was playing its last episode, I got excited. I remember liking the show. I remember not seeing it in a long time. I put everything on hold. Then I learned that Adventure Time had hit a rough patch in its last few seasons with many recycled tropes and retcons just gumming everything up. The stories were still interesting and entertaining but I was losing my affection for the tragic story of Ice King which was all I was paying attention to. So yeah, Adventure Time. It was fun but it went on too long.

105.The Walking Dead vol 31: The Rotten Core by Robert Kirkman et al. - The show is boring now. I tried watching the season after the end of the Saviors War and I can't even get through it. The comic is finished so these are the last few stories and they only prove that the whole thing went out with a whimper. So now everything is coming back together. The extended Dark Age that most zombie apocalypse shows posit is coming to an end with the city state run by snobs who force people to do whatever job they were doing before the Apocalypse. I wonder at the infrastructure that could justify that kind of caste system so easily in light of a zombie apocalypse. So this new safe space isn't safe and Rick is getting suspicious. The comic ends with Duane getting killed by the political establishment and Rick deciding that he's going to have to take over.

I almost want to admire a comic that has been repeating the same story but in a way where the stakes continually increase. Rick and friends come to a place. They think it's safe. For various reasons it turns out not to be safe. They have a big war. People die and then there's a semblance of order. The scale increases from a prison to a cult to a suburb to a loose confederation to a would-be feudal lord and now we got an actual modern city. There's also the whisperers who seemed like a threat until Negan did his last great moment.

But yeah, the whole book - it's really Negan's book. Negan is great. Without Negan it's boring.

9. Adventure Time: Pixel Princesses by Danielle Corsetto and various - there are a lot of artists who worked on this book and I feel really bad for putting it under this subject header as it's not a stupid book by any means. It's light and there's mostly material about video games that didn't excite me, but it's a fine book. It's Adventure Time. Lumpy Space Princess and BMO are the main characters as LSP has a party that she doesn't like. BMO wishes that princesses could be inside him. Magic Man is just there and we get video game stuff as the princesses go through levels to save themselves. Fetus Princess finds the cheat codes and they all learn an important lesson about friendship or accepting themselves. Except for BMO who gets to be a princess now, at least in this story and nowhere else. The end of Adventure Time made me remember that I had liked the show and hadn't seen it for a long time. Apparently that was a lot of people's reactions as most didn't even know that the show was still on. So I put a bunch of graphic novels on hold. Some are great and some are ok, and Ryan North does the same joke he did on Squirrel Girl which is to have footnote but for some reason used green ink.

This is one of the more ok ones.

10. Extraordinary X-Men: IVX by Jeff Lemire & others - I am so sorry for giving the artist the shaft in these reviews. I'm just not going to type out every name especially when there are three in one book. However, for this one the artists keep sticking in cheeseball softcore porn shots. Not the egregiously crass ones like Batwoman being introduced butt first (but still twisting around to show that the artists can draw boobs) in 52, but there are enough splash pages with body parts front and center to know that someone is thinking of the 12 year old boys without internet.

But really I'm most annoyed by how stupid this story is. It's just the X-Men deciding to go to war against the Inhumans for their Terragon Cloud (was that It? Who cares) and it skips over the war for some not terribly compelling character building. I think I like Jeff Lemire as a writer. I think I enjoyed his graphic novels about the deer-human hybrid. I don't remember them. I suppose he's trying to make something interesting by focusing on the single characters within the narrative of a dumb story about mutants and inhumans fighting to see who will be most popular in the movies and television shows (spoiler alert - neither apparently as the mutants are working for Fox and the Inhumans were never very interesting, at least not until Kamala Khan became one).

But the individual stories are dumb. Storm decides whether or not to go to war. A red shirt mutant dies and Storm says sure. Forge gets Old Man Logan to tell him what happened in the stupid alternate dimension of Old Man Logan which was stupid. Apparently Forge is happy to know that alternate universe Forge is a "badass" (please retire this word. I've read too much Cracked.com and it's worship of Theodore Roosevelt is enough). At least Logan is bored. And then there's one about the part demon sister of Colossus and then another one after the war is over (advertisement in the back for that book. This was a tie-in) where everyone plays baseball and the writers prove that they want to draw Storm with a very tight butt. And a special about Kitty Pryde coming home.

So fucking boring. So fucking inane. Did I really love the X-Men when I was a teenager? It was better once, right?

11. Batman/Two-Face: Face the Face Deluxe Edition by James Robinson and Don Kramer - DC has had a rough couple decades. Their books are just so miserable. There are bright spots like the title where Superman is living with Lois Lane and their son in Smallville (a series that seems like someone read about Marvel writers feeling trapped with Spiderman as a married man and decided to accept it as a challenge) but mostly it's a parody of a parody of a Frank Miller inspired shitfest. How many reboots? How many new ways to talk about the characters? The New 52 was supposed to be the one and it wasn't. What was that one where Darkseid basically destroyed Earth 2 and it was just an exercise in desperation (and sorry Black Superman - you are the president and the big superhero and Earth gets fucked).

That's just to say that I don't know what universe or reboot or timeline this one is supposed to be in. After 52 when Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman disappear for a year? Maybe? That's a plot element. Batman comes back to Gotham and things start going wonky. People start dying. Two Face seems to be re-emerging even as Batman charged Harvey Dent with being the new vigilante.

And that's where my WTF alarm goes off.

Batman decided that of all the people in the world to pass on his mantle to, Harvey Dent was the one. Just because Harvey is better looking now so he's no longer all angsty and therapy is going so well. So why not tell him to go around beating up criminals? That's a healthy outlet for a severely bipolar dude.

I really want to talk about the story and how it's a mystery where Harvey Dent is the main suspect but then it's too obvious that it's Harvey so it's someone else. In other words, it's like Psycho 2 where Norman Bates is not the killer but it is supposed to look that way, complete with the ending where yep, Harvey Dent goes back to being Two Face because the events have driven him back to crazy.

But I'm still hung up on the plot point of Harvey Dent being Batman's Robin, even more than Robin. Because what the fuck guys?