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Saturday, March 01, 2008

One-Sentence Review: KICK-ASS and CRIMINAL 2




KICK ASS does not; CRIMINAL Steals My Heart.

17 comments:

  1. Why is John Henry Irons on the cover of Criminal #2?

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  2. Don't you mean Jefferson Pierce? ;)

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  3. I was kinda disappointed with Criminal actually. It's like Brubaker sometimes mistakes the cliches of the genre for the genre itself. It was enjoyable, but E.B. is still a fume of the writers he loves (a Goodis tribute? really?). It reads as slavish.

    Also he cannot write realistic black people to save his life.

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  4. I've decided to only read Criminal in trades, since I leave floppies for my impulse buying, and I never feel impatient with buying Criminal. But I'm too much of a Millar fanboy to not have bought Kick Ass, and OH MY GOD, Kick Ass was just beyond awesome!!!! Millar's pacing, characters, dialog...I mean, wow, he's the most on point writer in comics! Romita's art was *incredible*!!! This is the best modern superhero comics can possibly get!

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  5. I couldn't get Criminal in trades. Those crime novel/movie retrospectives in the backmatter swing me solidly toward the "monthlies" camp. And the stuff up front ain't bad, neither!

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  6. "Why is John Henry Irons on the cover of Criminal #2?"

    "Don't you mean Jefferson Pierce? ;)"

    I guess the Glyph Awards are as blind to the appeal of the current incarnations of these two characters as I am. Maybe you could harass them too and ask them why Infinity Inc isn't running for anything -- not even the the Fan Award for Best Comic.

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  7. "Kick Ass" is like a mean-spirited "Invincible" with the addition of the word "homo" in it.

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  8. Val,

    ""Kick Ass" is like a mean-spirited "Invincible" with the addition of the word "homo" in it."

    Hmmm.... I didn't get that vibe at all when I read it initially. Now I want to go and re-read it to see if I can pick up on that!

    Regarding the word "homo," the reason why I liked the dialog so much is because it's *exactly* how young males - high school age - talk amongst themselves, or at least that's how it sounded when I was in school. Words like "homo" and "fag" were tossed around as casually as any cuss word imaginable. Not that I'm trying to say it's right, I just liked that the book wasn't trying to pretty *anything* up.

    In any event, I'm not trying to imply not liking "Kick Ass" is wrong in any way. I am a pretty huge Millar fanboy, so I'm too biased to be a good indicator of his quality! lol

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  9. "I guess the Glyph Awards are as blind to the appeal of the current incarnations of these two characters as I am. Maybe you could harass them too and ask them why Infinity Inc isn't running for anything -- not even the the Fan Award for Best Comic."

    I get it now. Your ability to recognize black characters is proportional to the quality of the comic(s) they appear in. Thanks for clearing that up.

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  10. "Regarding the word "homo," the reason why I liked the dialog so much is because it's *exactly* how young males - high school age - talk amongst themselves, or at least that's how it sounded when I was in school."

    See...I could take that explanation much better if he didn't have an American high school student obsessed with comic books and vigilantism using words like "pithy".

    Guys calling each other "homo" all the time through schooling years in American truly is REALISM at work...but you can't necessarily cite realism as a defense when you try to use flowery, uncommon vocabulary from the mouth of an American teenager.

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  11. "I guess the Glyph Awards are as blind to the appeal of the current incarnations of these two characters as I am. Maybe you could harass them too and ask them why Infinity Inc isn't running for anything -- not even the the Fan Award for Best Comic."

    Of course! I figured you out, Val. Your ability to properly identify black characters is proportional to the popularity of the book(s) they appear in!

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  12. The Glyph Awards aren't about popularity, Shane -- they are about good characterization and writing! That's how they came up with the nominees. Go on, visit the website, read about the board of judges, and look at the nominees. Don't you know anything about the Glyph Awards? I'm disappointed in you.

    If John Irons and Jefferson Pierce as they are currently written in books like JSA and Infinity Inc are so well defined as you claim -- why weren't they nominated? For that matter, why wasn't Green Lantern nominated? Why wasn't Dwayne McDuffie nominated for JLA -- only Fantastic Four?

    But trying to explain this to you is pointless, because you don't really care about the subject matter -- you just want to play "king of teh internets."

    So in the future, I want you to come to even threads that have nothing to do with the subject matter -- such as this one -- and show everyone how cool and smart you are. Because I know that means a lot to you, Shane.

    And when I do a feature on the Glyph Awards, I especially want you to come post! I insist.

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  13. Trolls: come out of the woodwork! The comment thread has been hijacked and this is the perfect opportunity to stink it up!

    C'mon, how many comments can we get: 30? 40?

    70?

    Can I dare hope?

    My hits increase in proportion to how many trolls inflate it with irrelevant posts demonstrating how smart they are! Help me on Google AdSense! I could make a whole $5 today with your help!

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  14. Here I thought my Haiku Reviews were the end-all, be-all of brevity and you go and show me up with two books in one sentence. Nicely done! :D

    I've been waiting on the Trades (and better finances) for Criminal. If it impresses nearly half as much as Gotham Central, I'll be a happy man.

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  15. I'd disagree with the substance of your Kick-Ass review, except there wasn't any. I really don't at all see how it's like Invincible; if any, it's a somewhat less cynical superhero version of Wanted. It didn't set the world on fire, but it succeeded at what it set out to do. And I thought the point of the homo line was to illustrate that Kick-Ass came up with the worst, most childish retort ever out of inexperience.

    Also, while the Glyph awards represent the best in black-oriented or black-originated stuff in comics, just because a character or book isn't nominated in a certain year doesn't make the character or book worthless/uninteresting/crap.

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  16. Oh, I didn't find Kick Ass to be very mean spirited. Thought it was pretty funny and openly geeky. Millar clearly is in love with his own book. Perhaps some of that enthusiasm rubbed off on me in the reading.

    But I openly admit to having a a very black sense of humor. So sue me if I laughed at the guy with wings having a malfunction with his gadgetry.

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  17. Haven't read Criminal yet, but it's heartening to read that the first issue of Volume 2 maintains the level of quality on display throughout Volume 1.

    Try as I might, though, I simply cannot see the words "Kick Ass" without thinking of Eric Cartman.

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