Commentary Track for the Buy Pile, March 25, 2010

Every week I do a column full of comic book reviews as I've done since March 2003 and currently published at Comic Book Resources. Then, after the reviews post, I try to come over to my blog and expand on the thoughts and ideas listed there. Sometimes it's profound, sometimes it's gibberish, but it's always about comics ... let's see what we get this week!

What? This week's reviews ...

Remember that weird week a while back where I didn't dislike anything? This week was the opposite. Nothing was really catching my imagination. Weird.

Anyway, since that's all crap and I'm gonna take a whole blog to dissect Blackest Night some time in the next few weeks (in theory, don't hold me to it if I forget) let's look at Mark Millar's Nemesis.

I want to be on board for this. I'm the first one who says that Batman is a freaking psychopath. Billionaires with hangups don't put underwear on the outside of their fetish suits and go kick people in the face late at night in dark alleys. They spend their money making the world see things their way. The penchant for punching and young boys ... that's just some freak stuff, dude, no matter how you slice it.

Which is not to say that I think Batman isn't awesome, because he is. By sheer will, more than any Green Lantern, he has been the linchpin of galaxy-spanning events more than once. He's an amazing character. He just happens to be a dangerously repressed psychopath as well.

So the idea of a Bruce Wayne that has no repression, that he's having all the fun that the Joker has ... that's an intoxicating concept to me. So when I see it played out in the same shock-value decompressed style that made Kick-Ass tedious for me ... meh.

Now, people will be quick to call me a "hater" because despite my negative opinions, Millar's making a lot of money doing things this way. Which is fine -- I recognize that I am not the audience for every piece of content. I'm not gonna mitigate my desire to call shenanigans on it anyway.

I needed about fifty percent more content (details, character elements, plot points, whatever) to say the really enticing idea got properly executed. Failing that, I'd need more visuals like the bits with the train. As seen ... sorry, short of the mark, for me anyway.

Also: it would have been easy to just lift store clerk Quislet's whole shtick about Thaal (really? Thaal?) Sinestro being Space Hitler, now fueled by "pure" white power ... but people already think I'm that guy ... you know what? Let's save that for the "mediocrity" blog. That'll do for now.

Playing (music): "Take Over The World" by Kids in the Hall