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The NY Internatonal Fringe Festival is upon us again! Ever August, earnest playwrites get the opportunity to have their works produces and performed all over New York (mostly in The Village) in the hopes that they’ll be seen, enjoyed, and maybe, picked up and launched into an Off-Broadway, or maybe even Broadway run! (Ever heard of Avenue Q? A Fringe Festival Success Story!)

So, as a recovered Boy Scout, I was excited to see a silly looking comedy called Scout’s Honor put on by Cardium Mechanicum and written by Ed Valentine, who according to the press pack has bit of experience and success in his dramatists’ endeavors.

Not that this play was any indication of his previously praised talent or success. The Fringe Festival this year is producing 187 plays. Of these, maybe 5-10 gain a high level of buzz and excitement. That leaves room for quite a few bombs. Scout’s Honor was a two-part production. Part one was about Boy Scouts, called “Snipe Hunt” which was about the common camp-out stunt of sending younger scouts out into the woods to hunt for an elusive creatuer called a “snipe” which doesn’t actually exist. The cast consisted of a nerdy Eagle scout-master, two mock-machismo Boy Scouts (named “Mike” and “other Mike”) A rich, daddy’s-boy cub scout, and a troubled, knife-wielding boy scout, an a sensitive younger scout who saves the day in the end. Most of the desperate humor in this skit derived of gay-jokes and mocking New Jersey.

The second, longer half was the girl scout story called “Becky’s Beaver” about a girl scout troop going Beaver hunting in the New Jersey woods. It starts funny, lying hevily on alliterative phrases (Well Barbara and Betty bopped the biggest and best beaver, Becky!) the obvious “beaver” entendre, being the joke that the company hoped to stretch out for a skit that was ill-advised to be stretched into a full-length play. When things get desperate, they add jokes about girls’ insecurities and social hierarchies, more gay jokes, more Jersey jokes, cripple jokes and magic mushrooms.

The acting was amateur, even if they were relying on a play that seemed like it was written up by pair of a high-school students getting high for the first time, and would have worked a lot better as a five-minute skit at a Boy or Girl scouts’ talent night, not a 75 minute offering at the New York Fringe Festival.

I fear this may be a forboding to the quality of theater we may expect this year. Choose your Fringe Shows wisely, folks.

For the record, I wrote the piece on RUBULAD to praise its ingenuity, not to advertise it. This is specifically why I did NOT list the address or when it occurs.

For the commentators who posted the address, this is why the review was deleted.

For those who claim that it “sucks” now, get over yourselves. Sometimes its good, sometimes its not, it all depends on what YOU make of it. Dress up, dance, drink, flirt, and have a good time. Or not, it doesn’t matter to me.

I still have a good time.

Batman is one of the oldest comic book superheroes to still reign at the top of Comic Book popularity. Nearly 80 years in the game, with innumerable writers and artists behind the cape and cowland possessing one of the most frightening and enthralling rogues’ gallery ever concieved (and their own home to boot: A haunted Asylum named Arkham) and to top it off: No superpowers whatsoever.

And as far as I’m concerned, Batman is the only Classic DC book worth reading.

Of course, that all depends on who’s at the helm. Batman in the 1960’s and 70’s was a campy joke. The Adam West TV series immortalized that foolish, goofball take on a man who was supposed to be The Dark Knight. Everything was bat-gadgets, and excessively complicated and hoky schemes to kill him, instead of just riddling him with bullets or chopping him into pieces when he’s unconscious. (Two-Face once tied him to the back of a giant coin that he flipped with a crane. And these are the people running the Gotham City criminal empire?)

In 1986, one man restablished Batman as the once and forever Dark Knight, and that man (a comic book legend in his own rite, rising in the world of film as well) was Frank Miller. In The Dark Knight Returns, Miller’s showed us his dark future in which a 50 year old Bruce Wayne, 10 years retired as Batman returns to the cape and cowl with a new, female Robin to take on the mutant-gang menace threatened his precious city.

I personally consider Frank Miller as the comic books master of violence. Real-world violence, the stuff that results in splatters of blood, bruises that swell with pus and shattered bones that never truly heal right. Decades ago he rose above the average serial scribe (a writer who’s locked in to a regular comic book serial) and produces works that are wholly his own. The most famous, mostly due to their green-screen Hollywood adaptations are Sin City and 300.

But in the spirit of Dark Knight Returns (and the heavily hyped, and thoroughly disappointing sequel: The Dark Knight Strikes Again) Miller has returned with one of the best modern Batman artists, the genius behind Batman: Hush Jim Lee, Miller has taken on All Star Batman & Robin, which is a much more complex retelling of the origin of Robin: The pre-teen circus star Dick Grayson of The Flying Graysons whose parents are murdered in a corruption scandal.

In expanding and evolving the Robin origin, Miller has incorporated other Batman characters (the original Batgirl, Vicki Vale, socialite reporter and early Bruce Wayne love interest, and other DC heroes who discuss what is to be “done” with this troublesome Batman who possesses no powers, but has the gall to put on a costume and fight crime!)

But what makes the irritatingly late-releasing All-Star Batman & Robin such a joy is that Miller, with his penchant for blood and bruises is that he sinks himself fully, trully into the most villainous edge to Batman’s nature.

His sadism. Batman is a sadist, and has no qualms about acting on that irrepressible need to cause pain and injury. This is the vow he made on the night his parents died: not to bring an end to the criminal element that took his parents lives, but to inflict unfathomable pain and anguish and crippling injury to those who choose it. In Miller’s newest take on the Big Bad Bat, he relishes, (not unlike a serial killer) in the rush of adrenaline and endorphins he gets in mangling would-be criminals:

“I took out a trio of woud-be RAPISTS and left them with enough broken-bone pain to last them a LIFETIME.”

“I fed a drooling mugger his teeth by the dozen. He’s probably still coughing them up.”

But the line that every Batman writer is forced to walk remains intact: Bruce Wayne, as Batman- never kills.

Perfect to compliment Miller’s true-to-spirit re-telling of a piece of Batman’s past is another one of the 6 great comic writer’s who I will worship and follow until the end of my days: Grant Morrison.

(Who are the other four? Mwah-hah-hah. . . wait and learn. . .)

Morrison is not quite in the same Pantheon as Frank Miller and another elder statesman of DC comics: Alan Moore (The Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Batman: The Killing Joke) but he writes with maniacal predictions of a near apolcalyptic future, often leaping into a Dark New World and forcing his audience to pick up on the clues he drops a dozen-to-a-frame and get a general idea at the story arc’s he’s applied to a pre-existing universe that seemed positively sleepy before Morrison grabbed hold.

His last grand evolution (entendre intended) toward a comic book universe with its own epic mythos was his run on X-men from 2000-2003, changing the title to New X-men and making the book much, much darker and science-fiction-rich than the recent writers who made it nothing more than an endless soap opera with predictable plotlines. He concludes his run with one of his classic post-apocalypse visions title: Here Comes Tomorrow
Now Morrison is taking a thoroughly Batty (oh yes, intended) idea to the Batman Universe: SURPRISE! The Son of Batman! born to and raised by Talia, daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul, he is the perfect human being: trained from childhood to be a fighter and assassin and heir to Batman’s mantle. Morrison’s run on Batman (the book title is Batman, not Detective Comics, or any of the Batman offshoots, just: Batman) has just hit #666, and the end of civilization is rich in the air.

News reports talk of a record-breaking 123 degree weather with talk about a dirty bomb detonating in Mecca, and a health epidemic in China claiming 18 million lives. Bruce Wayne is dead and Damian Wayne has taken on the cape and cowl. Problem is, he’s not the only one out there who claims to have inherited the right to wear the pointy ears. Another Batman out there claims to be the Anti-Christ and has teamed up with the new scum of Arkham Asylum (who we learn only by names and images, no powers, no origins) to bring about death and destruction. (Big surprise.)

It’s a Dark new future with a new Dark Knight. And as Damian Wayne, the new Batman lets us know early, he struggles to live up to his father’s greatness. He fears no harbinger of the devil, he has met the devil before and gave his soul to him long ago. He tells this Ant-Christ Batman, as he breaks his neck:

“If your father wants me, tell him to come and get me.”

This new Batman kills.

It’s ballsy, to introduce a son-of-a-famous character as the new heir (It worked for Spider-Girl) but if anyone can do it, it’s Morrison.

I’m very excited to see what becomes of Damian Wayne: The Batman

Its good to be on top.

Is the central message in AMC’s new, heavily hyped and well-worth the buzz drama “Mad Men” the most important line in every marketting ploy is: “By Writer/Producer Michael Weiner of The Sopranos” And Mad Men is all about advertising, and makes no qualms issues or petty feints about it.

Because in 1959 (or thereabouts. The general message seems to be leaving the prudish sensibilities of the 50’s, but before the outright social revolution of the 60’s.) We were on top. The Depression was our parents’ woe, The War was drifiting comfortably into the nation’s memory, and we had WON. It was a victory like we hadn’t seen since the birth of America, and the men on in the advertising industry were reaping the benefits of our macho, modern, swagger a good fifteen years later.

On top of the economy, on top our vices, (cigarettes, booze, and sex being the trifecta of choice) and mopst importantly, they were on top of whatever America wanted. It was up to the Men of Madison avenue to decide what America wanted.

At the height of the American Advertising Industry, Madison Avenue was the beating heart. Television, Radio, Magazines and Movies were all America had to concern itself with in the well-earned salad days of the 20th century, and someone had to send out the message to America, telling all the fellas and dames what they were supposed to buy. It’s no surprise then that the machismo, arrogant nature to these men is what feuled the industry.
And at the center of the story is Don Drapper, or it seems more fitting to drop the R and call him what he is: Dapper. Slick black hair, chizelled jaw, exactly what America was buying in the silver age of cinema. He is however, smart and comlex enoguh not to be overconfident. The opening scene is of Mr. Drapper jotting ideas down on a cocktail napkin on how to sell more Lucky Strikes. He asks advice of the silent, aging black waiter, who is then chided for being too “chatty”.

It’s not easy to keep one’s balance at the top, and Mr. Drapper is down-to-earth, cautious and wise enough not to get too confident and rock the boat. A lesson his piggish, smug, and about-to-be-married , and still chasing skirt 26-year old co-worker Pete could bear to learn from.

At the other end of the spectrum is Peggy, played by Elizabeth Moss. (Whom I’ll always remember fondly as President Jedd Bartlett’s youngest and most beloved daughter Zoey) She’s the new secretary at the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency, assigned to Mr. Drapper. She’s shy, demure, but in no way naive, simply ready to work hard and achieve. Her new “friend” and supervisor Joan, a heady, fire-haired dame who wears her curves tight to her dress is ready to give her all the advice she can handle in one mouthful, including what types of gifts to give to the receptionists, and what parts of her figure she should “advertise” most. Joan, it seems, knows how to move up in the world, if you’re of the “weaker” sex.

If you’re already disgusted by the sexism, it gets better. The (male) gyneocologist who smokes in the examining room, and spends most of his time telling Peggy the virtues and vices of contraceptives without becoming “one of those types of girls.” Peggy’s so overwhelmed by the new normal, she simply nods and complies.

By the end of the first episode, Mr. Drapper rises to the occassion of holding on to his clients at Lucky Strike, in sight of Readers’ Digest’s ludicrous claim that smoking cigarettes is linked to cancer and without resorting to the psycho-babble suggested by a German psycho-analyst that humankind, deep down has a desire for danger and all things dangerous

While also just barely holding on to a troublesome, yet intriguing client: Troublesome partly because she’s Jew, trying to branch into the WASP market and troublesome but also intriguing because she’s a She.

Sure, Mad Men gives us what we know is bad for us. (Alcoholism, sexism, racism, anti-semitism, cigarettes, chauvanism, capitalism, and the list goes on. . .) but like any good advertiser, it knows the number one rule: Give the people what they want.

Tune in, you might learn something about how to sell a good show.

American Movie Classics, Thursdays at 10pm

Here are a handful of truisms for the current state of the Classic Marvel Universe:

Civil War is over.
Captain America is dead.
Spider-man is outed as Peter Parker, and superhumans are federalized under Iron Man’s, Iron-clad, all-seeing eyes.
And, things are attempting to settle back into normality, only its a compeltely new, and unfamiliar normality.

The only way for comic books to stay fresh is to shake things up heavily while trying to stay as true to the nature of the characters and their shared history as possible. It’s the nature of comic books, and most fantasies rearrange histories, bring characters back from the dead, erase and re-write things that happened in order to take a story in a very different direction.

The problem is the sense that’s nothing permanent. And the only thing that’s more permament in the world of our readers, its death.

And as any experienced comic book reader knows, characters don’t stay dead.

It’s often been the mainstay of DC comics to regenerate dead characters more than Jesus on a bender, but in Marvel, for a long time, death meant something.

Norman Osborn, the original Green Goblin died in 1973. In the 2000 marvel shake-up, that was undone.

Same goes for Bucky Barnes, Captain America’s sidekick, dead since 1945 and Returned in: 2002 as a brainwashed Russian spy. In the case of Magneto (dead more times than Kenny it seems) they don’t even bother explaining how he comes back anymore. Same goes for the most recent return of the Avenger Hawkeye: Died during the devastating Avengers: Disassembled story arc, and now joining all his newly fractured Avengers buddies trying to catch up on what just happened.

So when Marvel has a world-changing event like the death of Captain America, complete with a 5-part “Fallen Son: Death of Captain America” funeral story-arc that follows the 5 stages of grief: Shock, Denial, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance, it’s supposed to convey a strong sense of permanence. I’m sorry to say, that considering Marvel’s recent track record of character rebirth, I don’t know of I trust them.

Anyway, Marvel’s realized that the whole Marvel U is just one big funky dysfunctional family, with characters hopping back and forth between teams and alliances like a super-powered swinger party, they’re coming back around with their NEXT big crossover story: WORLD WAR HULK!!

Which I’ll explain in Hulk-like terms.

Hulk bad. Hulk smash Las Vegas. Bad Hulk.

Big-brainy guys send Hulk away. Far, far away to bad planet, where Hulk beaten down, weakened, made into a slave and then a Gladiator, tortured by his cruel alien masters.

This make Hulk mad. When Hulk mad, HULK SMASH!!!

Other slaves like when Hulk Smash. They make Hulk General. Hulk lead rebel warriors against mean alien masters and Hulk win. Hulk fall in love with hubba-hubba alien hottie, and make her his queen.

Hulk finally happy.
Then Big-brains send Big Bomb. Smash Hulk’s new home. Bye-bye alien hottie. Bye-bye unborn child. Bye-bye new home, new throne. Bye-bye new world.

Now Hulk really mad.

Now Hulk really smash.

It’s Marvel doing their inverted morality ploy again. The Illuminati, (the big brains behind each corner of the marvel universe who decide what is and what shall be in their world) were only doing what was best for the people they’ve sworn to protect. Even if it meant slaughtering possibly over a million other livin things that stood as a potential threat.

Does that make them evil? Or just making the necessary compromises that a sap like Spider-Man or Captain America couldn’t be trusted with?

All I know is that it’s fun when Hulk Smash

Then again…I dove head first into Civil War, last thing I need is to spend all my pocket scratch on another “world-changing crossover saga.”

Marvel, I think we need to take a break. I’m sorry but. . . I’m going back to Vertigo. Perhaps we can still catch-up now and again. I’m sure you’ll be fine without me.

Bye-bye.

Following up on last week’s post about DC/Vertigo’s Transmetropolitan, I decided to write about one of Vertigo’s newer, very popular books, the harrowing masterpiece about life during wartime: The DMZ.

DMZ is quite possibly the most frightening comic book out there for very unexpected reasons: There are no superpowers. There are no amazing sci-fi advancements in technology. No forays into the mystic realms, no aliens. Just a thoroughly haunting vision of the worst aspects of U.S. militarism taken to the worst case scenario:

A second American Civil War. The forces of the U.S. Military vs. a homegrown insurgency borne out of the disgust and outrage of an international War-with-no-end that was once quaintly referred to as The War on Terror.

What makes the heartbreakingly intelligent DMZ so frightening is that it could actually happen.

DMZ is a “Day After Tomorrow” storyline, meaning a fiction based on the actual current events going on in our lives today. If I had to guess the year that DMZ takes place, I would guess 2009.

DMZ is currently in its 4th story ARC, with the first two arcs already available in TPB: On the Ground and Body of a Journalist. In the pages of the 2nd story arc, we learn how this new war on our very streets happened:

“The Wars [ie: Iraq, Afganistan etc.] were a million miles away. We had troops in four separate conflicts in three different continents. . . I remember when the Free Armies formed a government in Helena. They spread out from there. No one could grasp how it could happen. . .

“They laughed at this idea of redneck armies in pick-up trucks. The laughing didn’t last long. Pilots weren’t about to bomb small-town America. It all happened so fast that the Pentagon didn’t have time to whip up a propaganda campaign to paint the Free Armies as traitors.

“There are no borders or front lines for this war. It’s completely unconventional. The Free States are an idea, not a geographic entity.”

So that’s how it happened. It started in the West, secretly moving its way across the nation so that by the time the over-extended, shell-shocked military made their way back home to fight against their own friends and brothers, it had reached the shores of New Jersey.

So the DMZ, the contested land between The Free States and the remains of The United States is, of course. . . Manhattan.

So DMZ is about life during wartime, but more specifically, its about journalism during wartime. Our narrator and protagnist is Matty Roth, na assistant to hotshot war journalist Viktor Ferguson who gets gunned down over “The DMZ”. Roth, who appears to be the only survivor, is now an extremely important commodity to the United States and soon, The Free States as well.

And in a “city” (though “territory” is a more likely term for it) in which anyone can be sniped down from any hidden gunman in any of the remaining buildings throughout the wartorn area, the most important commodity a person can have it seems is:

A Press jacket. Word of Roth’s presence spreads through the DMZ quickly. And in a divided America, with Manhattan as the fulcrum to a very, very weighted scale, the favor of the only independent journalist in the territory is very, very valuable.

To the thorough relief of the reader, Matty Roth (who looks like any other shaggy-maned, scruffy-bearded cutey-boy journalist in a black T-shirt and cargo shorts) is incorruptable. No matter how many times he stares down the barrel of a gun, (and nearly shits himself each time, like any of us would!) he refuses to let himself be used.

More often than not, he finds himself as a go-between for the U.S. forces (Which include his own military father, whom Matt despises for typical “life-during-wartime” reasons: His parents divorced for poilitical reasons), forces within the DMZ. (His friend Zee who works as an emergency paramedic, the little militias that control various neighborhoods, etc.) and the Free Armies who control the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel and try to use Matt to push their own agenda. 

And what does Matt want? Well, it seems that even he’s not sure. He’s pulled in so many directions, with so much subterfuge and so many hidden agendas, that most of the time he’s just trying to report the elusive truth while staying alive and doing whatever seems right is each circumstance.

Matt’s inclination toward heroism is never in doubt, but like any of us, he makes the wrong decisions and trusts the wrong people, and is often running all over the bombed out streets of Manhattan trying to undo the trouble that he helped facilitate. Which is one of the numerous aspects of what makes DMZ so brilliant. Through the fog of war, it’s nearly impossible to tell what the “right” thing is at the time. It’s a lot easier through the lense of history.

What also makes DMZ a thrill to read (especially for us New York-a-philes) is the streets we have come to know and love like the back of our hands transformed into an almost lawless survival-of-the-fittest society.

As New York (in the real world) becomes more and more of a massive outdoor shopping mall with luxury condos popping up like black-heads on the face of a fifteen year-old McDonalds fry-cook, there is a twisted thrill in seeing Manhattan even worse than it was in 1977. With the Thompkins Sq. militia lobbing mortars at Stuy-town and the Central Park Conservancy turning into a ghost-militia that protects the trees, animals, and grows bamboo as a cheap source of fuel for the winter.

And of course, out of this latest chapter in the unsinkable history of New York, comes a new culture of street art, street theater, at the most real, uncorrupted-by-corporate-interest urban culture that has possibly ever existed in New York’s near 400 year history. People are struggling to stay alive, but that doesn’t mean they’re not also handing out fliers for their next art-gallery showing.

DMZ might just possibly be the most serious, heart-breaking, realistic comic-book out there. And if you love New York, and fear what might happen to it if the warmongers of the country remain in power, then pick up the first two TPBs, and take a good, long look at your current living situation and the loved ones around you.

And consider what you just might be willing to do to protect it.

Some Directors have left such a mark on American cinema that their style seems to have become its own genre of film. So let me set the record straight:

Martin Scorcese is a director. Not a genre.

Which is the problem with, I’m sorry to say, nearly every moment of the film Brooklyn Rules that stuffs every last Italian-American, Catholic, Brooklyn, blue collar, male-bonding, mafia-tinged, good-kid-trying-to-make-his-way-out-of-the-rough-and-tumble-neighborhood cliche into a mediocre attempt at emulating Scorcese’s early masterpiece Mean Streets.

Throw in a couple of scenes stolen directly from Saturday Night Fever, down to the interrupted sex in the backseat of the bar and romantic shots of the Verrazano bridge, and you’ve got a director who clearly wishes he had made one of the afformentioned films, not just cannibalized them.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Brooklyn Rules is the story of three best friends from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. A trio of Catholic School trouble-makers who find a dead body on the beach and each walk away with a momento.

Bobby takes the dog sitting in a carrying case in the back, the almost comically vain Carmine takes a zippo lighter and our protagonist Mike takes a revolver from the glove compartment. Making sure that we remember that gun for every slow, drawn out second of the film.

The boys grow up into Jerry Ferrara (from HBO’s Entourage) as Bobby, a dumb cheapskate who wants nothing more than to marry his girl, work for the Post Office (apparently, he’s too dumb for anything else) and pray at every Virgin Mary statue he passes.

Scott Caan, one of the few competent actors in this film becomes Carmine, with bulging biceps and a pathological fixation on his hair. Carmine of course, wants to get mobbed up. (And only mob-boss Ceasar Manganaro, played by the often bored-looking Alec Baldwin) is his way in.

And sadly, Michael, (who irritatingly narrates us through every second of film) is the work-a-day Columbia University classroom hustler. Pitifully, what little the screenwriter offered the character is then mangled by the talentless Freddie Prinze Jr.

The scenes are repetitive to the point where by the seventh time the boys are sitting around in classic Brooklyn locales drinking Budweiser, you must presume that the Milwauke based company was one of the film’s primary investors. When the esoteric scene that begins the film comes full circle at the end, it leaves the audience thinking. . . what. . . So that’s it?

Brooklyn Rules was directed by Michael Corrente whose unimpressive resume indicates that he’s not in line for an Oscar nod anytime soon. However, it was written by Soprano’s verteran Terrence Winter. It seems like he’s trying for his Scorcese moment, and clearly fails in his first attempt.

Rounding out the lifeless performances of the film is Mena Suvari as Ellen, Michael’s classroom love interest (from Connecticut of course, and has her birthday party at a bar in TriBeCa! Ooohhh, fancy!) She goes through her lines with absolutely zero chemistry with her goofball screen partner, in the back of her eyes, you can almost hear her saying (I went from American Beauty to this?)

The highlights of the film come from the clever barbs and one liners the boys from Bay Ridge lay on each other, the classic 1980’s nostalgia, and the English-mangling father of our boy Bobby, for whom each line is a hillarious hodge-podge of misused words.

Cliches can be fun sometimes. But stuff a movie full of them, and it leaves you wondering what, if anything, from this film was worth taking from it on its own merits.

As I explained in my first post, I am a Marvel Comics partisan. When it comes to the mainstream of Comics, I am devoted to this very soap-operatic, forever sprawling universe, and the various storylines therein.

However, when it comes to deeper social context, darker and much more adult storylines and some of the most fascinating futurist, semi-religious and metaphysical multiverse, there’s only one place to go, and that’s DC’s adult-oriented offshoot company: Vertigo. This week:

Calling all: JOURNALISTS, ANARCHISTS, FUTURISTS and MEDIA ANALYSTS!!

Transmetropolitan (aka “Transmet” for us converts) is the book for you! The concept of Transmet is basically easy to describe.

It’s the distant-enough future. “The City” (the city’s name or location, we never really learn except that it’s the only city that really seems to matter in the world. Therefore: New York.) is an endless expanse of drugs, sex, religion, information, and absolute excess of stimulation of any and every variety. Our protagonist, massively tattooed chain-smoking psychoticly brilliant journalist named Spider Jersusalem hates it here. Which is also the name of his column: “I hate it here.”

Spider wants to live as a neanderthalic reculse in the mountains

But Spider needs drugs.

Drugs cost money. Lots of money.

There’s one way for Spider to make the money he needs for drugs:

Live in the city that eats away at every last piece of his maelevolent black soul, do lots of drugs and write the most scathing, hateful, truth-filled articles he can about the lies, hypocrisy and absolute idiocy of the goddam city. And lose his temper often enough to brutally maim some idiot who meant no harm, but pissed him off nonetheless.

And who wouldn’t hate living in a cesspool like “The City”. Imagine a multi-thousand square mile Times Square. Except 500 years in the future with endless distractions from any real purpose in life. (ie: drugs, sex, scientology, etc.) Every indication of our current cultural and technological trend says we’re hurtling toward this endlessly pointless existence with no sign of turning back.

(P.S. If you’ve EVER watched a full episode of ANY celebrity-centered “reality” show, you are the reason why this is happening and I fucking loathe you for it.)

What makes Transmetropolitan truly brilliant though, (other than the technicolor explosions of social satire within each panel, drawn with wild humor and utter excess by Darick Robertson) is the layers and layers of commentary about our current trend of media-saturation, easy answers by the thousand and total complicity in the face of endless corruption, yet doing it with a slapstick style humor that makes us guffaw at the sight of Spider’s steel-tipped boot smashing in the face of some evangelical pain-in-the-ass who says the only true path to salvation is to drill the evil thoughts out of your head with an 11 inch railroad spike.

(I’m aware that this is the worst run-on sentence in the history of blogging, but when reviewing Transmet, it comes with the territory.)

The imagination that frighteningly brilliant futurist and sci-fi satirist Warren Ellis applies to the technology of Transmetropolitan is staggering. Any modern apartment has a “maker.” Which is exactly what it sounds like. A box that pulls random molecules out of the air to make WHATEVER you want. Spider starts the storyline by making a full lin of black jackets and pants and begins each morning “making” a different type of coffee (Cuban! 5 sugars!. . . Arabica! No sugars!) Imagine never having to shop for anything. Ever.

Some authors might make this the focus of their story. For Ellis, it’s just a passing convenience for a much more important central plotline: That this character is a superhero; his only powers are his mastery of words, investigative skills, an unabashed need to tell the truth and his ability to spread that truth to everyone who will read it. Which is most everybody, Spider is a maverick celebrity and despises it. Or loves it and is in complete denial of his need to be praised.

The first storyline involves a police-riot brutalizing a ghetto of mutants. Spider observes this from a rooftop (like superheroes are known to do) but instead of jumping down and beating everyone up like Batman would do, he cracks open a laptop and starts writing. He stops a police riot by transmitting an article about it all over the city in real time. When word gets back to the police that the whole city knows whats going on, they put down their billy-clubs and walk away.

Spider gets his cumuppence of course, beaten to a pulp by the piggies for his interference, but he knew he had it coming and ends up sneering and practically asking for more.

Because like all junkies, Spider is addicted to his drugs of choice. And I don’t mean his “Queen of Ant extract (upper)” or his endless collection of little red, blue, black, white, green and multi-color pills that he downs by the bottle, I mean the only thing that gives him the rage he needs to fuel his writing:

The City.

I’m sure some of us can relate.

Pick up the first book: Back on the Street to see the world that Spider is part of or the second book: Lust for Life which is a more varied collection of stories with some real gems.

FINALLY! Issue #13 in the series The Ultimates 2 is finally out.

Which, to someone who doesn’t know how long we Panelgeeks have been waiting means nothing. For those of us who have been waiting for months between issues, it means. . . Well, just a little bit more than nothing.

A little backstory: The Ultimates are the Ultimate Marvel version of The Avengers aka Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. The big shots. The guys that handle the big, international, cosmic, inter-galactic and often inter-dimensional baddies with the love and adoration of the public. The original Avengers consisted of Iron-Man, Wasp, Giant Man, The Hulk and Thor, with the newly discovered Captain America who had spent the late 40’s, 50′ and early ’60s in a block of ice.

Over time, most of the heroes of the Marvel Universe spent some time on the Avengers. and like most super-groups, they’ve had more than their share of troubles and trouble-makers on the team.

The Ultimates jumps on that flawed Supergroup idea and bends it on a massively politcal angle. The Ultimates, are the U.S. government’s first line of defense. Consisting of the six mentioned above, and adding expert marksman Clint Barton aka Hawkeye, Russian spy and assassin Natasha Roumanov aka The Black Widow, and Magneto’s twin children (who have a bizarre fixation on each other) Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. All run by the one-eyed master of disaster, General Nick Fury, head of S.H.E.I.L.D. (oh, and he’s black in the Ultimate version.)

And one of the major points of The Ultimates is to see how the modern age of terror-awareness, pre-emptive striking, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-if-we-feel-like-it U.S. military tactics would work when a total of 11 people make up the majority of the U.S. defense network.

And what a rag-tag bunch of hopefuls they are!

In the first story-arc we learn that Hank Pym (Giant Man) is a wife-beater with severe inferiority issues (he makes himself bigger. Hmm, compensating maybe?) Tony Stark (Iron-Man) may be the most brilliant industrial billionaire in the world, but he also downs a quart of vodka every day before breakfast. (In classic marvel, Stark has been successfully in recovery for years) Steve Rogers (Captain America) has been in a block of ice for 57 years and likes to spend his evenings reading the paper and listening to Bing Crosby records while everyone else is at a dance club.

It’s chock full of pop-culture references and tongue in cheek humor, but not much depth to the dialogue; they sound like a bad Hollywood script. Which is something I think subversive Marvel super-scribe Mark Millar is trying to convey: The Ultimates have a budget of billions (taxpayer money) and get paid obscenely, but seem to get things wrong a lot more often than they do right.

Their first mission is to take down one of their own (Hulk) who goes on a homicidal rampage through Manhattan because his ex-wife is on a date with Freddy Prinze Jr. (I know. . . Freddy Who? . . Thats how long it takes for these freakin issues to come out!)

The most recent story-arc brought on the whole idea of a a modern World War Three, distilled into two teams of the Most Powerful Beings on Earth. Funny, it seemed to leave as much collateral damage as a regular war. Here’s the most bitterly funny part: The whole thing begins, turns around, and ends in a single day.

It starts with The Ultimates getting more clout and attitude through the world. They help create the European Union of Superhumans (Captain Italy, Captain Spain, Captain. . . oh you get the point.) and conduct various pre-emptive strikes against growing nuclear threats around the world. (Including an anonymous Middle-Eastern State.)

But two can play at this game. . .

We see a secret meeting between military leaders from China, Russia, North Korea, Syria, Iran and, get this: FRANCE to discuss their recent biological endeavors. Many of these endeavors are perfect counterparts to each of The Ultimates. Through the help of Loki, the God of Mischeif (who looks like a black-haired Cillain Murphy in this book) helps turn the various Ultimates on each other, establish a few traitors, and in a single hour, send in their forces to take down the U.S.

Here’s the irony: They call themselves The Liberators. They call the U.S. The Modern Roman Empire and consider their first act as the new leaders of America to give us “free elections”

Of course, the Ultimates turn it around at the crucial moment and save the day. The best part of the whole story arc was Hawkeye’s escape: At just the right moment, he flicks off each of his fingernails and flings them like precision aimed blades at each of his captors. Killed eight enemy soldiers with FINGERNAILS!! That was HOT!

And, after waiting months on end for each issue, was the finalinstalment of Millar’s run on The Ultimates worth the wait? . . .

NO!!!

Bottom line is this: The book had good storylines, EXCELLENT illustration, (especially the battle scenes with massive levels of destruction, done by the illustrious Bryan Hitch) and the dialouge was, honest to god, meant for a Michael Bay film! The most recent issue, however (#13) has a brilliant 8-page fold out of the final smash-’em-up battle scene between The Ultimates and a slew of norse mythical goblins. Nice.

It was fun. And now that its all collected in easy to find and purchase TPBs, I’d say its a good read for your money. I’m just regretting all the months i spent asking

“Is it in yet? Next week? Are you sure?”

*****COMIC TIPS******

Friend, are you ready to graduate from being a simple reader into a true collector? Of all the options, comic collecting is one of the least expensive regular expenditures of the collectors world, with a grand return: A bit of pulp fiction along with phenomenal artwork and bright colors with varying levels of replay value.

Well my friend, it’s simply. When you pick up your $3-5 dollar issue, tack on another 15 cents and say: “A Bag’n'a’board.” That’s a plastic mylar bag to protect your precious issue, and a thin white cardboard to keep it straight and flat.

They’ll last through the ages, and you’ll never know when you might want to pick up that old issue of Black Panter #57 where he pours out one ounce for his hommies.

Something about a cover charge can really generate a whole aura around a show.

$0- You get what you pay for. Sometimes you get a true gem for free, others, you get a piece of crap, but its okay! You have enough cash to get drunk and you enjoy the effort.

$5- They’re trying. There’s definetely effort, and some $5 shows have been the best shows I’ve ever been to. $5 at the door means that the performers are taking themselves seriously, and you should (try to) as well

$10- All right. The kids have grown up and they have a comprehensive performance that should captivate your attention for the time being, and even if it’s not great, should hold the gravitas that a double-digit door-charge should hold.

So if a Rock-Dance peformance called Fairytale Dreams, dreamed up by circus performer and neo-bohemian Jennifer Upchurch charges $15 at the door, you would expect it to be a real show. Intricate, talented, depthful and heavily choreographed dancers moving along a layered narrative, bringing us into a fantasy world that truly trancends us from the mortal realm.

Not a bunch of fairy-tale girls and flitty boys prancing about backed by a goof-ball drums-and-bass duo called Fat Free with some vague storyline of boys lost in the land of fairies.

The three major components of Fairytale Dreams were dance, trapeze and hula-hoops. The dance was pedestrian, an uninspired mix of spins, cartwheels and kicks, the type you can catch for a dime a dozen at the Prospect Park meadow any Sunday afternoon. The trapaze was, at best amature, and the hula-hoops with their detailed christmas light schemes were one of the minor pleasantries of the act.

Except that they can be found at any RUBULAD party or Burner fundraiser for enormously less money and attention expectation.

I can think of three things that would have made Fairytale Dreams a show worth going to:

1. More talent

2. More practice/rehersal

3. Less freakin’ money at the door.

If you’re going to charge $15 for a show, you have got to to earn it.