MONDOmagazine

By Miles Baker and James O’Connor

Miles’ Book

Joker’s Asylum: The Joker
Written by Arvio Nelson
Art by Alex Sanchez
DC Comics, 2008

Bad sign: when the lettering is the only thing that slightly appeals to you in a comic.

I know I have said this before and I know I will say it again, but this was the worst comic I have ever drawn for Random Comics of the Week. And there’s a whole lot of blame and shame to be spread around between the heavy handed writing and the monstrously ugly art.

First on the “oh god do I really have to finish this book to review it” block is the art. The Joker doesn’t even have a nose — he has a squiggly line in the middle of his ovoid blob that connects to all the other lines in his blob. I hope that they reveal that this issue is actually about Two Face wearing joker makeup because all that texturing makes it look like the Joker has terrible acid scaring on one side of his face. Every now and then Sanchez will draw a character without a thousand lines on their face and you get the idea of what sensible inking looks like, but then on that same page you see him go back to his standard.

In terms of the other important part of a good comic, the writing, this comic is a disaster. It’s not as bad as the art. But the moral of the story is so heavy handed that the title might as well have been “Who is sicker: society or the Joker?” Which might have been okay if we hadn’t seen this from dozens of Joker stories. This time it’s a TV producer who airs the Joker’s madness because “it’s good for ratings” while ignoring his assistant’s attempts to have the police come and arrest the Joker. Of course that man is an evil prick. You didn’t shock me with that one, Nelson.

Then there is how Nelson writes the Joker’s dialogue, which is as heavy handed as his moral. Nelson probably wishes that each page was like a talking birthday card with canned laughter inside. Sadly, it’s not and all you get are sentences that are a series of one-two cliches like, “Nothing to do except lie around and watch television all day long. It’s enough to drive a person sane!” Really? Exclamation mark? Did we need that to tell us that this is an attempt at a joke? Look at it in your mind without the exclamation mark or bolding and you will see a funnier sentence. Nelson and his editors, however, keep shoving jokes down the reader’s throat as if they don’t understand the concept of humour.

Isn’t there some big blockbuster movie coming out with the Joker in it next month? You’d think that the editors might pay attention to anything the Joker is up to at the moment and ensure that it was a quality product. But apparently not.

Note the lack of an exclamation mark.

James’ Book

House of Mystery #3
Written By Matthew Sturges and Bill Willingham (?)
Art By Luca Rossi and Zachary Baldus
DC Comics, 2008

So, I’m trying not to judge this book too harshly for not being what I expected. If you’re not aware, House of Mystery was originally a horror anthology in the vein of EC comics that went through a few different permutations. The most famous took place between 1968 and 1983, and stared Cain as the requisite creepy storyteller.

Now, I love anthology books. Unlike the vast majority of comics, you don’t have to know their entire history to enjoy them. Each issue has a completely new story, and if you missed last month’s issue, it’s no problem.

But in this House of Mystery, the usual anthology formula is reversed. Instead of devoting most of the book to a new plot with a framing device familiar to regular readers, the framing device is the bulk of the book, and the “story” being told to the reader is a meager four pages.

It feels like Sturges and Willingham are trying to pull a Sandman with this book by creating a new property that’s only tangentially related to the original with a few sly winks and references. The problem is, I don’t care about the new property. It’s just your standard “People-probably-stuck-in-Purgatory” plot with the standard Goth imagery. We’ve all seen this plot countless times before, and the generic characters do nothing to make it stand out.

I mentioned Bill Willingham in the last paragraph, but I’m really not sure what his involvement here is. Everything I’ve checked claims he co-writes the book, but his name only appeared on the cover. I searched every page and couldn’t find a trace of him. Do he and Sturges trade off every issue? If so, are Willingham’s issues better?

Similarly, the DC website promises “a tale illustrated by none other than House of Mystery’s distinguished alumnus Bernie Wrightson!” Where is that? Why am I spending more time looking for missing members of the creative team than I did reading the book? Even if DC manages to solve any of these mysteries, I doubt I’ll be making a return visit to this House.

Isaac’s Book

Tales of the TMNT Vol.2 #47
Written by Jake Black
Pencils by Jim Lawson
Mirage Publishing, 2008

The whole thing about these ‘Tales‘ books is that they can tell stories from anytime in the Turtles’ long history of comics. According to Dan (probably Dan Berger, managing editor for Mirage) this particular issue recalls a quartet of super-hero turtles from an alternate dimension who appeared back in TMNT vol. 4 #7.

So we’re off to a bad start, because that means I’m reading a comic severely lacking in Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo – I’m reading the origin of Graviturtle, Blobboid, Griddex, and Shellectro (okay, that’s a good one), four characters I don’t know or care for.

I have nothing against getting to know these four, and maybe they’re awesome, but unfortunately we’re not given the time to get to know any of them. Unlike most issues of Tales of the TMNT that I’ve read in the past where the focus is on a single character, allowing for a more intimate story to be told, this issue just throws everything at us with no real depth. If a character appeared in the background of TMNT vol. 4 #7, then I’m sure they were all mentioned here. So, good – we know their names. We don’t really know a whole lot beyond that. There are some motivations revealed, this guy is good, this guy bad, but that’s the most basic idea there is in a story- protagonist and obstacle.

The art is pretty simple, but I don’t have a problem with that.

Ugh – I guess I just wanted a Donatello story, you know?