Propaganda Review — "Is This Tomorrow: America Under Communism!" (1947)

Just two years after the end of World War II, a Catholic special interests group made a comic book about how communist infiltrators could enslave the United States — and in today’s democratic socialism-baiting political milieu, the paranoid ravings of 75 years ago all of a sudden don’t seem as absurd anymore.

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Comic Review: Marvel's "The Toxic Avenger!" (1991)

In the early 1990s, the house Spidey built ran a comic based on Troma’s flagship character for 11 issues … and surprisingly, it wasn’t half bad.

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

I know I’ve said this before, but it absolutely BLOWS my mind that somehow, someway, The Toxic Avenger — a no-budget splatter movie whose highlights include children having their heads squished by drunk drivers and morbidly obese men having their intestines yanked out of their stomach cavities — was transformed into a children’s property, complete with Nintendo games, a toy line from the same people behind Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and, of course, a short-lived cartoon on Fox Kids. To this day I have no idea how such an arrangement came to be, with seemingly the only reasonable explanation being “cocaine, and a whole lot of it.”

But no siree, the kidification of Toxie didn’t stop there. The Toxic Avenger also managed to land not just one, but two different Marvel Comics series. While the second was based upon the Toxic Crusaders cartoon (and thus, was naturally inclined to be a little more subdued, thematically), its forerunner was based explicitly — and I mean that in more ways than one — on the original Troma film trilogy.

Millions of fans? That seems like
a bit of an overestimate, don't
it?

Penned by veteran comic scribe Doug Moench (who is probably best known for an insanely long run on Master of Kung Fu back in the day), I think it’s safe to say expectations for the series were pretty low. But as it turns out, the 11-issue run isn’t bad at all … in fact, I’d go as far to say that it’s actually a pretty fun and inventive take on Troma’s marquee character that somehow manages to stay true to his cinematic roots even without all of the copious violence and nudity.

With artwork supplied by Rodney Ramos and Val Mayerik, the series looks WAY better than you’d expect. And while the comic does play it fast and loose with the official Toxie canon, that’s not to say it didn’t get away with some pretty risque material. Indeed, for a comic published by Marvel in the early, pre-Image 1990s, it does push the boundaries pretty far, complete with a few uncensored swear words sprinkled in with the exploded limbs and gruesome zombies whose skin is so rotten it’s practically gelatinous.

The series does a pretty good job of keeping Toxie’s personality aligned to the movies, even if his created-for-the-comics catchphrase “omgowa” feels really forced and out of place. After recapping the character’s origin — it’s close enough to what we see in the first movie to avoid any complaints — it doesn’t take long for the comic to start blazing its own trail, introducing a new central antagonist — a devilish CEO named simply “The Chairman” who has two demonic dragons flying in and out of his mouth — who immediately begins plans to take over Tromaville using a bevy of toxic waste-spawned atrocities.

And admittedly, we do have some pretty cool original villains show up. The first couple of rogues are by-the-numbers goons and thugs with generic mutation gimmicks, but things pick up considerably when The Chairman contaminates the health club from the original movie with a toxic juice that turns all of those hardbodies into undead killing machines. And once Toxic has made mincemeat of them, The Chairman ups the ante by digging up the graves of the dispatched mutants and patchworking them into a ten foot-tall, hulking anti-Toxie called Biohazard … which is actually a pretty badass villain, if just in terms of aesthetics alone.

Of course, showing a body explode into a shower of limbs and appendages is just peachy as long as no bloods or innards are visible ...

But really, the highlight of the series has to the the “Souvlaki Sewer Syndrome” two-parter in issues seven and eight. In this mini-arc, The Chairman concocts a wild plan to turn half of New York into irradiated, sewer-dwelling zombies via tainted souvlaki, with the hideous creatures eventually pooling together into a mammoth wad of rotting adipose tissue. As I said earlier, for Marvel in the early 1990s this is actually some pretty edgy stuff, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find the artwork here at least partially unnerving. For me, the zenith of the series has to be when Toxie gets devoured by the souvlaki monster, and he has an internal dialogue about how oddly serene it is to be sloshing around inside it as it rampages through New York, as if he was peacefully gliding to and fro in a rotting womb. Yeah, the way I put it is really unartful, but trust me, the execution in the book itself is WAY better than my crappy description.

Unfortunately, "The Toxic Wigger"
just didn't have the mass appeal
Marvel hoped for.

Unfortunately, the series is all downhill from there. The ninth issue is definitely a “jump the shark” issue, as the issue completely abandons the ongoing story arc for a one-and-done yarn in which Toxie gets abducted by aliens and, inexplicably, raps his way through the whole story. Issue 10 resumes the normal story arc, and while it is fun watching Toxie kvetch his way through half the issue while stuck in a stockade, it’s pretty obvious that the writers knew the whole series was about to get cancelled. Hence, why the 11th and final issue feels like such a rush-job, complete with a very anticlimactic end to the whole Chairman and Apocalypse Inc. storyline. Granted, it has its moments, but it’s clear the folks behind the comic were just phoning it in — as obvious by the series’ final panel, in which they get all meta on us and have disembodied naysayers scream “higher sales!” at Toxie. Get it, because the book itself wasn’t selling enough to keep Marvel happy? Man, now that shit is clever.

Still, on the whole, I’d say The Toxic Avenger is nonetheless a better than average tie-in comic, especially for Marvel in the early ‘90s (anybody remember their series based on Pirates of Dark Water, Bill & Ted and even WCW by-god ‘rasslin?) While it doesn’t perfectly mirror the attitude or spirit of the Troma films from which it’s based, the writers did a pretty good job translating the material into PG-reading, and I thought the artwork was just plain snazzy.

I wouldn’t call this a “great” series by any stretch, but it’s certainly better than it had any right to be. Granted, I haven’t checked out its spiritual successor in the Toxic Crusaders follow-up, but if that one is at least half as decent as The Toxic Avenger … well, actually, that’s pretty much what I would expect it to be, I suppose.

Regardless, this is a fun, moderately overachieving series anchored around a seemingly impossible premise. And as far as I’m concerned, it’s a way better take on the character than what we saw in The Last Temptation of Toxie. Sigh, if only it lasted long enough to give us that long-awaited crossover with Robocop we had no idea we both wanted and retroactively needed …

Kudos my hero, leaving all the best ...

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Comic Review: 'The Infinity Gauntlet' (1991)

Just in time for the much ballyhooed Avengers movie, The Internet Is In America reflects on one of the most important crossover events in comic book history

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@JimboX

In just a few days Infinity War is going to be released, and odds are it'll shatter all-time Hollywood box office records. Indeed, the over/under right now is actually plus a good $100-$200 million that it will break the all-time record for highest-grossing film in Hollywood history. Indeed, if the movie doesn't hit at least $2 billion in global ticket sales it would be considered a huge surprise.

You don't need me to add any more fuel to the conflagration of hype. By now, we all know the story of how the suits at Disney brilliantly turned their standalone movies into one gigantic, interconnected uber-franchise the likes of which filmdom has never seen before, and for better or for worse, Infinity War represents the endpoint of what started ten years ago with Iron Man. This is the carefully laid out culmination of ten years' worth of behind-the-scenes planning and you better believe Disney is throwing out everything they've got on this one. They've probably spent a billion dollars making and marketing this motherfucker, and they fully expect to recoup their investments and then some. Everything Justice League wasn't, this sumbitch is going to be — needless to say, it's going to be a long time before we see a Hollywood production with THIS much hullabaloo heading into its release.

Now, while the movie is called Infinity War, from what I've gathered the flick isn't really based upon the comic of the same name, but its predecessor from 1991, The Infinity Gauntlet, which even now remains one of the most revered and celebrated crossover spectacles in comic book history.

Now THAT is how you make a
crossover feel like a truly special
event.

And for good reason. While Marvel characters had teamed up many teams before in earlier comics (The Secret Wars being perhaps the most noteworthy example), The Infinity Gauntlet upped the ante by increasing the scale to cosmological levels. This wasn't just Spider-Man and Thor teaming up to fight Dr. Doom, this was goddamn everybody in the Marvel Universe coming together to take on a dude who had godlike powers and was on a suicide mission to literally kill every living thing in the universe. Not only did you have heavies like Dr. Strange, The Hulk and Galactus getting in on the action, you even had the rarely seen Celestial characters like Eternity and The Living Tribunal entering the fray to mix shit up. Nobody had really tried doing a crossover event that big before, and to be frank, I don't think anybody has done it as well ever since.

Written by Jim Starlin (the guy who pretty much single-handedly created the "space opera" side of the Marvel universe through his work on Silver Silver and Captain Marvel) and drawn by George (The New motherfuckin' Teen Titans, ya'll) Perez — with utterly fantastic inking from Josef Rubinstein and Tom Christopher — there's no denying Infinity Gauntlet is a worthwhile read, if just for the trippy-as-fuck, hyper-colorful artwork.

But in case you haven't read the thing before heading into the big Avengers movie ... and for some stupid ass-reason you can't find the fucker online ... old Jimbo is here for you to fill in the blanks. Grab yourselves a nice, cold cola and prop up your legs, folks — here's the Internet Is In America-approved CliffsNotes version of the epic mini-series.

Alright, issue one. Mephisto (that's Marvel's pseudo-family-safe way of saying "Satan") is sucking up to Thanos. To pay tribute to his divine powers, Mephisto makes a giant space rock statue saying "God" — which Thanos immediately crumbles into dust using his Infinity Gauntlet powers.

We cut to Doctor Strange, who detects someone is trying to break into his mansion. As it turns out, it's a half-dead Silver Surfer who just crashed through his roof, warning him of Thanos' plans to take over Earth. Surfer gives us the backstory on Thanos; the living embodiment of Death was a little miffed that there were more people alive than who had ever died on the planet, so she decided to resurrect Thanos from the dead and give him godlike powers to "balance out the equation."

Then we cut to a trio of hoods (Jake Miller, Ralph Bunker and Bambi Long) knocking off a liquor store, killing the clerk and accidentally driving their car off a cliff and killing themselves. Huh. That seems like a really, really random thing to include. Surely, we won't be revisiting this seeming aside a little later in the series, will we?

Surfer continues to recount his ass kicking from Thanos to Strange. He says he and Drax the Destroyer LITERALLY had their souls stolen by Thanos and banished to "the metaphysical world of the soul gem." Apparently, Adam Warlock is the President of Soul-World and returned Surfer and the Destroyer to their corporeal existences. Surfer also implies that Mephisto TOLD him that Thanos was coming, which I guess makes him a turncoat. Anyhoo, Thanos goes to Death-World and asks Lady Death if she's forgiven him for stealing the Infinity Gems and she just walks off and he looks all forlorn and Mephisto says he doesn't deserve to be treated any such a way.

OK, back to some guy smoking a cigar talking about the car crash from earlier. Well, SOME kind of celestial intervention resurrected the trio from the dead, and that Jake guy apparently has the ability to control matter now. That Ralph guy is all mutated and burned up like that one dude in Robocop, while that one chick is literally turning green.

Meanwhile, Mephisto keeps sucking up to Thanos and it seems like he's cooking up some plan to cajole him out of his powers at some point. Meanwhile, Thanos is still severely pussy-whipped over Death, who doesn't love him back even though he's the supreme being of the universe. As one of Death's servants so eloquently puts it: "you love is bondage," to which Thanos retorts "my love is worship!" So Thanos builds this giant crystal space temple and asks Death to be his co-pilot in dealing destruction throughout the cosmos, but she still rejects him. Then Mephisto gets in his ear and tells him if he REALLY wants to impress her, he's got to REALLY up the body count. And, of course, he is MORE than willing to oblige. But first, he tries to impress her by showing the zombified remains of his granddaughter, Nebula, whom Thanos describes as a "tribute to the blasphemy of life and the glorious promise of death." That STILL doesn't impress Death, though, so Thanos gets pissed and causes one of her servants to explode. Then Thanos remembers "hey, wait a minute, the whole reason she brought me back was to kill half the universe, so I better get to killing half the universe then." To which Mephisto replies: "He's really going to do it" with a GREAT "oh shit" look on his face.

Hmm ... two black people, being rescued while one of Trump's hotels gets decimated in a tidal wave. I wonder if Starlin and Perez knew what kind of connotation the future political landscape in America would give this one in hindsight?

Thanos snaps his fingers and we cut to Spider-Man looking down on Times Square. All of a sudden, half the people on the city streets vanish, just like the biblical Rapture, and everybody starts freaking out. Then Spider-Man starts freaking out thinking about Mary Jane, and that's our cue to take a tour of the expanded Marvel Universe, and we get to see frenzied reaction shots from Captain America, Nick Fury (back when he was still white) and The Incredible Hulk, among others. We also learn that half the animal life on the planet has disappeared, too, which I guess would wreak havoc on the going rate for prime rib. But I digress, and wildly.

Then we cut to the Titans (and no, not the ones from Tennessee, either), who fittingly enough, live on Saturn's moon, Titan. For those not in the know, they're kind of like an Outer Space Thanos-monitoring service. And, uh, they're watching ALF, for whatever reason. We learn that mysterious disappearances are happening on alien worlds too, and then that one fat dude who got killed in a car wreck and resurrected walks into his partner's hotel room and now he's in a giant beehive. Uh ... the fuck. Naturally, that's our cliffhanger transition to issue two.

Thor, She-Hulk and the Vision are trying to keep planes from falling out of the sky and Quasar is ... umm, doing whatever Quasar is supposed to do, I guess. Meanwhile, the Skrulls think the Krees are responsible for the disappearances, so they're both gearing up for a huge outer space war. Meanwhile, Adam Warlock tries to take over Doctor Strange's soul, and Dr. Doom is all shades of pissed that somebody is actually outdoing him in the whole giga-death thing.

Then Thanos abducts his brother Eros and makes his mouth disappear, just because he can. 

Captain America gives us an update on the disappearing heroes, and the list includes such five-star F-listers as Makkari, Marvel Boy, Night Thrasher and Windshear. Meanwhile, Thor kvetches about the rest of the group finding out he's not the "real" Thor, but I have no idea what the fuck he's talking about there. Meanwhile, Odin calls a council of "the Sky Fathers" — including Osiris, Zeus and Nuada — and they all decide to join forces to resist Thanos' invasion.

Fuck, man, can't we get Perez to draw
everything Marvel related from now on?

Quasar is still flying around the cosmos looking for something, and we learn that short, fat cigar-smoking dude from earlier is actually Pip the Troll and, what do you know, he's watching ALF, too. Goodness gracious, what was it with Jim Starlin and ALF, anyway?

Dr. Doom breaks into Strange's house and subdues the owner before blasting the Surfer. Then ADAM WARLOCK shows up and that gets everybody's attention and then we cut back to Thanos in his outer space death ship. Eros thinks aloud that maybe all of that limitless power has driven Thanos insane, thus earning him the "No Shit, Sherlock" award of all-time ever in history.

Adam Warlock proposes he, Doom, Strange and the Surfer form an alliance as "the forces of reason" and Thanos gets so pissed Death won't smile at him that he makes a fucking red giant explode. Which kind of pisses off Galactus because he was about to eat it, but even *he* knows not to fuck with Thanos when he's this powerful. 

We cut to Cloak bemoaning how lost he is without Dagger by his side (by the way, I strongly encourage you to listen to Retro-Synth.com while reading this ... the mood it establishes is almost too perfect.) Elsewhere, Wolverine saves a woman from being crushed by a falling building and Iron Man watches the ENTIRE West Coast of the U.S. crumble into the ocean.

Then Namorita saves a young black couple in Atlantic City from a mile high tsunami, and of course, one of Trump's hotels gets swept away in the tidal wave. And Thor flies over what remains of Japan ... which is fucking nothing whatsoever. The "Fantastic Four" of Strange, Doom, Surfer and Warlock step outside and the entire neighborhood is destroyed. Pip says something must have really tee'd off the gods and Warlock responds by saying something to the effect of "exactly." 

Issue three begins. Thanos STILL isn't getting no Death pussy and a scientist tells Fury that the Earth has been knocked off its orbit and is slowly drifting away from the sun. Then Warlock and company teleport into Avengers' headquarters and starts assembling a superhero mega-team to go toe-to-toe with Thanos. We've got 'em all joining the fray: Wolverine, Drax the Destroyer (who, instead of being autistic like he is in the movies, is just canonically stupid), Firelord, Spider-Man and ... Nova. One of these, clearly, is not like the other.

If you don't want this is a four-foot-wide poster in your bedroom, you are the definition of soy.

We cut to Moon Night, of all fucking people, watching the Brooklyn Bridge burning to the ground. Then Surfer and Warlock head out into the vastness of the cosmos to assemble the rest of their team, which includes the Watcher, the Stranger, the physical embodiment of Love and Hate, Galactus and even The Living Tribunal himself, who is canonically the most powerful being in the Marvel universe, to the point he pretty much could be considered the "God" of Marvel-dom. Alas, the Tribunal, Eternity and the Watcher all tell Warlock they're not going to participate in the big battle, and Galactus tries to zap Warlock but he no-sells it.

Meanwhile Iron Man almost gets into it with Dr. Doom but Captain America breaks up the scuffle, then the Watcher just hoovers over Thanos' compound staring at him in what WOULD'VE been one of the greatest scenes in movie history had the MCU taken a more direct approach to its cinematic source material. 

Warlock tells Hulk and Wolverine to "sanction" Thanos because all of the other superheroes are too pussy to try to kill him, then Thanos summons Terraxia the Terrible to make out with him in front of Death to make her jealous, but she doesn't even bat an eye and that makes Thanos even more furious than ever.

Then the siege on Thanos' compound begins and Warlock tells Surfer he KNOWS they're all going to die but he led them into their demises on purpose so it would buy him a distraction. 

Cue issue four (which features a great cover of Thanos standing in the middle of the emptiness of space, saying "Come and Get Me!" like he has the biggest damn dick in the universe.)

BTW, Ron Lim is doing some pencils on this one. 

I honestly have no clue what's
supposed to be going on, but man,
does it look awesome.

"What good is godhood if you have no audience to flaunt it before," Eros describes Thanos' mentality. Then Mephisto gets in Thanos' ear and tells him to use his godlike abilities to allow the heroes a .05 percent chance of victory to make himself look braver in Death's eyes. So basically, he's still all-powerful, but he doesn't know his enemies' next attack for the big battle.

Hulk and Drax double team Thanos and send him reeling with a sneak attack (this part HAS to be in the movie.)

Thanos kills Namor and She-Hulk with some sort of outer space fungus cocoon. Then Thanos liquifies Wolverine's bones with a bear hug. Scarlet Witch gets vaporized. He suffocates Cyclops by making a giant glass box materialize over his head and he yanks the circuitry right out of The Vision's chest. And Thor reverts back to human form and suffocates in the cold, blackness of the universe. Oh, by the way, the heroes have 60 minutes to finish off Thanos or else they'll lose their ability to breathe in space. So, the clock, it doth continue to tick.

Cloak sucks Thanos into the nightmare dimension in his chest, but he quickly explodes his way out. Meanwile, Terraxia yanks Iron Man's head off. Thanos sends Firelord and Drax back to the prehistoric ages through a time portal and Thor finally gets his hammer back, thus resurrecting him. Alas, before he can land the death blow, Thanos turns him into glass, Spider-Man calls Terraxia a bimbo and Nova gets turned into a pile of Lego (no, for real.) Then Thanos shatters Thor and makes Quasar's hands explode. That leaves Captain America as the sole survivor against Thanos. Right before Thanos delivers the death strike, Silver Surfer and Warlock rush in to make the save.

Unfortunately, the Surfer misses yanking off Thanos' gauntlet by >>>this much<<< and Thanos drops Cap dead with one mighty bitch slap. And that's when Warlock calls in the infantry — a whole fucking cadre of Celestials, including Eternity and Galactus!

Time for issue five. Ron Lim has taken over full penciling details from George Perez, by the way.

Personally, I always liked Drax the Destroyer when he looked like the Green Goblin on HGH instead of Kratos' autistic nephew.

So Doctor Strange is playing armchair general in some far away galaxy while Annihilus invades an iced over Earth. Meanwhile, Death saves Eros from getting sucked into a black hole and the Surfer and Warlock have to outrun the universe literally collapsing. Chronos tries to bury Thanos UNDER time, but since one of his gems gives him mastery of time itself, the narrator (The Watcher?) says "it be like striving to drown an ocean."

Then Lord Order and Master Chaos try to rip Thanos in two. Then Mistress Love and Sire Hate tag team him, and Mephisto FINALLY takes the initiative and tries to steal the Gauntlet from Thanos, but he's saved by Mistress Death at the last second. Then Thanos and Eternity get into it and when they start scrapping a fucking white light takes over half the universe. Warlock and Surfer teleport back to Strange's stronghold, and The Watcher waxes philosophical on tyrants: "The nature of energy is to disperse. The nature of despots is to contain. Conflicting tendencies."

Then Thanos BEATS Eternity in battle and traps all the other Celestials in a giant outer space snow globe. Per The Watcher, Thanos is now "the center of all reality in this sphere."

And then, out of nowhere, fucking Nebula yanks off Thanos' gauntlet and makes Terraxia explode. She quickly reverts back into non-zombie form and tells Thanos the one thing she wants more than anything in this universe — REVENGE on his big purple ass.

So Warlock teleports Thanos into Strange's living room and Surfer immediately goes in for the kill so Strange has to call in Hulk, Thor, Dr. Doom, Drax and Firelord to break up the scuffle.

Then Warlock tells Thanos he will help him defeat Nebula, and he has no choice because he was inside the Soul Gem while Thanos wore it and he knows everything that lurks inside his heart, and he KNOWS that Thanos feels himself unworthy and allowed himself to lose the Cosmic Cube to Captain Marvel and that he even subconsciously allowed Nebula to steal one of the Gauntlets, so he agrees to team with Warlock to retrieve the other one.

One of about 20 or so panels in the series that
should be laminated and hung in the
National Archives one day.

Anyway, Nebula traps Doom and company in this weird kind of crystal trap. Then the unlikely trifecta of Thanos, Surfer and Warlock show up, and it's time for the FINAL CONFRONTATION, motherfuckers.

Issue six. Nebula users her gauntlet powers to bring everyone back to life and she keeps Thanos trapped inside a crystal barricade. Then right when Nebula is going in for the kill shot, the cosmic beings return and literally fracture her out of reality. 

Warlock and Surfer wake up in Soul World. Galactus and the rest of the Celestials pretty much gang bang Nebula with all of their power concentrated at once. Then Warlock takes command of the universe itself and freaks Nebula out so she drops the gauntlet, then everybody makes a mad scramble for the Gauntlets, with EVERYBODY trying to make sure Thanos doesn't slip it back on. Adam Warlock winds up possessing it, and he promises to wield it responsibly and everybody just kind of looks at him like "you know, I think I'll trust this motherfucker for some reason."

To thwart being defeated, Thanos detonates a nuclear bomb timer on his belt and Thor grand slams that motherfucker halfway across the galaxy like he was Marth in that one baseball event in Super Smash Bros. Melee. So Surfer and pals question Warlock's intentions, and he says something about why are they more terrified of an orderly universe than the celestial chaos they've been living under, and then he blinks himself, Gamora and Pip the Elf off to some faraway planet, where Thanos now lives on a small farm with his old costume set up as a scarecrow in front of a field. Pip asks Warlock why he doesn't just destroy Thanos right then and there and he says something to the effect of the universal mosaic requires every piece, and as much as thy may hate it, Thanos certainly serves an important part in the grand order.

And the whole shindig concludes with Thanos lamenting his newfound status as a dirt farmer in the asshole end of the universe, reflecting on the irony that the dude who wanted NO power whatsoever ended up with the most powerful weapon in the universe. And he concludes the saga with the absolutely PERFECT set-up for a sequel  —it's a single panel shot of Thanos smirking, saying he KNOWS he got the better end of the deal than Warlock did.

Yep. At one point, comic book writers actually knew how to do subtle sequel hooks.

Which allows us to circle back to Infinity War, the movie, for a moment. You know, for a character who has been built up as fucking death incarnate for ten years, the MCU really hasn't done a lot to explain who or what Thanos is. We'll just have to wait and see how the movies present him and lay out his modus operandi, but in this particular comic, they give him one of the most ingenious origin stories of any villain I've seen.

Thanos isn't some power-hungry space Pol Pot; instead, he's a dude who is literally out to kill the whole universe because he can't get out of the friend zone. To me, that makes way more sense than some guy trying to take over the universe to satiate his ego, or bring some sort of purity to the natural order. He's just a dude who loved this one bitch so much that he was willing to become the most powerful being in the universe to impress her, but even that couldn't win her heart. So what the fuck else do you expect a heartbroken dude with no hope and godlike powers to eventually end up doing? Shit, I am convinced that's the exact same thing that happened to Hitler and Stalin. One day, they realized some broad would never love them as much as they loved her, and so, all of that emotional hurt manifest itself in an outward need to wreak as much havoc as (in)humanly possible. That's such a better M.O. than just saying the asshole is pure-D evil and wants to control everything because of a God complex; we'll see if the MCU goes that route for the big movie (probably, with Hela as a substitute for Miss Grim Reaper), but personally, I'm doubting it.

Whether or not Infinity War winds up a colossal disappointment (although it's almost certainly going to be a financial dynamo), at least we've got this outstanding six-part epic to give us what we truly want as crossover-craving comic book fans. It's long enough to give the characters plenty of pathos and room to develop, but it's not lengthy enough to drag on too long and introduce too many plot twists and deus ex machina components just to keep the thing chugging along. People tend to sleep on just how solid early 1990s Marvel was, and if you haven't caught this one before, definitely do your damnedest to give it a glance before you check out the new movie; not only will it give you a pretty good taste of what to expect in the de facto live-action adaptation, Jim Starlin's zeitgeist-defying, decidedly un-cucked approach to the space opera formula will probably be about 50 times better than whatever form the movie ultimately resembles.

And if for that reason alone, you NEED to read this motherfucker, at some point in your comic book-ing sojourns.

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Comic Review: 'Black Panther & The Crew' (2017)

In which we celebrate Black History Month by taking a look at one of the biggest flops in recent comic book history (P.S.: come for the tie-in to the new Black Panther movie, but stay for Ta-Nehisi Coates' incredible anti-Semitism sneaking past Marvel's radar.) 

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@JimboX

Anybody who says comic books have only recently started injecting SJW-flavored politics into their stories clearly haven't been paying attention to the medium over the last 50 years. Just take a look at Marvel's work in the 1970s, which definitely sided with the progressive liberals on issues like civil rights (X-Men) black identity politics (Black Panther, Luke Cage) environmentalism (Man-Thing) and gender equality (Ms. Marvel), and D.C.'s work in the 1980s, which was championing gay rights in books like Hellblazer and Swamp Thing years before the mainstream media declared its own jihad against whatever they thought "homophobia" consisted of that particular afternoon.

Alas, in the 2000s, the industry decided to go full retard with the leftist politics, to the point comics stopped being low-culture, instant gratification juvenile junk and turned into full-fledged, foaming, anti-white, anti-male, anti-conservative and anti-Christian agitprop. Over the course of a decade nearly half of the X-Men roster was turned homosexual, Spider-Man turned into a half black/half Puerto Rican 12-year-old, Superman boldly declared his endorsement of open border governance, G.I. Joe have been turned into morbidly obese Hispanic lesbians who hate guns, and Archie - perhaps the ultimate emblem of apolitical junk culture - was literally gunned down by a racist Republican NRA member during a botched attempt to assassinate a gay black politician and his white male lover.

Not that you really need me to tell you this, but despite all of the back-patting that surely arose from turning Captain Marvel into a Muslim woman, M.O.D.O.K. into Donald Trump and Iron Man into a black teenage girl, none of these SJW-enthused works have translated into commercial successes. As it turns out, hardcore comic readers are actually in it for decent stories that expound about the decades of their favorite character's back stories, not identitarian dreck pandering to the latest leftist outrage du jour. That's kind of the inherent problem of propaganda - you spend so much time trying to fellate the base that you often forget to make your agitprop, you know, entertaining. 

And that is VERY much the case with the (in)famous Black Panther & The Crew mini-series from 2017. Originally meant to be an ongoing series, the project got cancelled two issues into its run and ultimately crapped out after six issues. The big hook for the ill-fated comic was that it was written by Ta-Nehesi Coates, a longtime The Atlantic columnist who - outside of writing articles ranting and raving against Bernie Sanders for not supporting reparations and berating Daniel Moynihan for being 100 percent right about father absenteeism being the single most important factor behind black underachievement - is probably most famous for penning Between the World and Me, an astonishingly popular tirade against contemporary racism in which the only two examples of "racism" the author could pinpoint was a time a white person told him "come on" to get on an elevator and when one of his friends was killed by a cop ... who was actually black. 

Anyway, Coates - who gets paid $1,000 a minute to harangue almost entirely white audiences about how their very skin tone automatically makes them perpetrators of hate crimes by biological default - actually wrote a couple of issues of Black Panther back in 2016, so you really can't say he doesn't have any comic book writing experience. But by that same token, I also think it's safe to say we ain't exactly dealing with an Alan Moore or a Howard Chaykin here, either. Fuck, the guy can barely make a 1,600-word diatribe on The Atlantic sound coherent, so I guess it's not really a surprise the guy isn't any more more deft with the sequential art medium.

But the big problem, as you will soon see, is that Black Panther & the Crew tried to make a "serious" political statement inside the framework of the single most ludicrous low-culture art form this side of pro wrestling and monster trucking. The series' Black Lives Matter pandering already made it dated as soon it hit news stands, but the fact Coates tried to insert that real world polemic inside a comic book world filled with super powerful God-like beings and robotic martial law death squads just made the thing a big, fat muddled mess of a "social commentary," one that's too stuck up its own ass to be fun and too fantastically absurd to be taken as a sincere statement about anything.

But hey - why don't we let this spectacular failure of a series speak for itself, why don't we?

Issue one is titled "Double Consciousness." Get it, because it's a reference to W.E.B. DuBois and shit? Anyway, it's 1957. There's this black dude named Ezra (aka, The Lynx) and he runs the Harlem version of The Avengers, alongside his super-powered crew Flare, Brawl, The Gates and Glass. He looks a lot like Malcolm X, which I'm sure is 100 percent totally coincidental. Anyhoo, he roughs up a drug dealer and tells him if he doesn't vamoose, next time he's going to incinerate his intestines or something.

Well, fast forward to today's Harlem, and Misty Knight is walking through a #BLM protest over the death of Ezra, presumably at the hands of the local po-po. So for those of you wondering just how long it would take the series before it devolved into shameless black power identity politics propaganda - well, it wound up being page nine of the very first issue.

Oh, and since this is a Marvel comic, the cops in the comic also include a unit of Robocop-wannabes called the Americops, which were created by PRIVATE INDUSTRY and therefore evil as all fuck by default. Just figured you folks needed to know that.

So Misty Knight has breakfast with Ezra's family and they refer to cops as "pigs" about half a dozen times. Then she investigates Ezra's jail cell and of COURSE there's video missing from the time of his death and then Knight and this other black chick have a discussion about mayonnaise and that's when the AMERICOPS attack them for breaking curfew, which, obviously, is codeword for "being black." Knight uses her metal arm to kill a couple of robot cops, and just when she's about to get fucked up, here comes Storm out of the blue to make the save.

We resume the "story" in issue two, titled "Afro-Blue." You'll see why in just a few. 

It's 1955 in Indonesia and Ezra is at the Bandung Asian-African Conference. He talks about Africans, Asians and Harlemites having "the same enemy" but never explicitly stating who (hint: it's Whitey.) Zip to the modern day and Misty and Storm walk into a crack house in Little Mogadishu and fuck up a bunch of ruffians. Then We learn Storm grew up in Harlem (now THAT's what I call a retcon!) and Misty is almost blown up on a train and she goes back to Storm's apartment and tells her to not give her any "intersectional privilege crap."And then Black Panther shows up on the very last page.

Oh, and by the way - the title is a reference to Storm's "beautiful blue black skin." No, that's literally what Coates tells the readers himself.

Issue three is titled "Black Against the Empire," so you just KNOW it's not going to be a bunch of paranoid, hysterical preaching-to-the-choir nonsense.

We travel back to Harlem, circa 1956. Ezra is in an underground bunker, staring at a bunch of "people of color" who might be candidates for some genetic experiments to make 'em into Wakanda super soldiers or some such shit. Then we jump to modern day and this old black woman named Marla tells Black Panther to stick it where the sun don't shine because of his bad manners.

Then Black Panther walks around Harlem, looking at all the gentrification going on and says "an empire is a plague - insidious and relentless" while looking DIRECTLY at two Jewish characters. And no, I am NOT making that up, as evident by the photographic evidence below ...

What the? Blacks, being openly and unapologetically anti-Semitic? Who'd thought such to be the case in a million, billion years?

Anyhoo, Storm is still pissed at Black Panther and they talk about their divorce for a bit. Wait, where they ever canonically married in the regular Marvel universe? 'Cause last time I checked, she was getting boned by Forge from X-Factor. I mean, not that it really matters, I guess, but still. Then they get a hotel in a place literally called "The Renaissance" and read a dossier on the property manager, whom Black Panther assumes killed Ezra. Hey, isn't Donald Trump famous for being a property manager and a multi-billionaire entrepreneur, too? What a funny coincidence.

Anyway, Black Panther wipes off some dirt and, yep, there's a HYDRA logo, right there in plain sight, in the basement of the apartment. Then a dude bazookas a condo and Luke Cage walks out unharmed, because he's Luke Cage, damn it, and being hard to kill is like his gimmick or something.

Issue four is called "Nothing But A Man," which isn't really applicable to Storm or Misty Knight, but asides, motherfucker, asides. We flash back to 1964, where Ezra is basically written into the real-life Mississippi Burning case. He brings his crew of  super-powered black people with him and they unironically use violence to force a bunch of white cops and bureaucrats to confess to murdering a bunch of civil rights workers.

Fast forward to modern day Harlem, where Luke Cage is literally punching Hydra helicopters out of the sky. Then he and Misty talk to this one black dude who was in the holding cell when Ezra mysteriously died. But he's not really much help, because all really wants to do is play pinball. Then they visit the CEO of Paragon Industries, the manufacturers of the Americops. Then its revealed that it's a subsidiary of Paragon Properties, which is uprooting all of the black people in Harlem for rich white Jews and their ilk.

Issue five is titled "Down These Mean Streets," which, unfortunately, isn't a thinly veiled reference to the theme music of the Fabulous Freebirds. 

Now it's 1969 in Harlem, and all of the Black Avengers look blaxploitation-tastic. Then we hop to present day, and some black dude in a robe with billy clubs destroys some Americops while they're trying to apprehend this Puerto Rican kid. Anyway, he's some half black/half Aborigine mutant I've never heard of before called Manifold. He talks about being mentored by Ezra, and how Ezra's black super soldier experiments were actually being bankrolled by Hydra, because they were trying to start a race war or something.

And that brings us to our sixth and final issue, rather optimistically titled "Everybody Loves the Sunshine," which to me, sounds extremely prejudiced against the thousands of white people on the planet who are deathly allergic to sunlight. But hey, fuck those ultra-honkies, ain't that right, Ta-Nehisi? 

It's 1972 and Ezra finds out he's been double crossed so he shoots his partner who was actually a Hydra informant and also looked a LOT like John Shaft.

Then we return to modern day Harlem. There's a big protest over Ezra's death, and of course, it isn't long before the fists start flying and Storm has to make it rain to keep everybody from rioting. The crew deduce that Whitey is using some sort of experimental mind control weapon to make everybody go bananas, but it's actually the work of this black dissident named Malik, who is secretly a double agent for Hydra. You know, Marvel's neo-Nazi, super racist terrorist network that has no real world analogue. Now, as to why the Fourth Reich would want to hire a black dude, or why a hardcore black identitarian would even think about aligning himself with people trying to clone Hitler, though, Coates gives us the following explanation: absolutely fucking nothing at all, whatsoever. 

And then the comic just ends with the crew declaring themselves "the streets," with no final battle, no resolution about Malik or the Americops or the Paragon subplot, nor Hydra or even who really killed Ezra. We get four pages of fan letters, then the editors talk about the comic getting cancelled earlier than they'd like, and that is it for the whole god-dang experiment.

But seriously ... why is that bad advice, exactly?

Boy, did that end on an anti-climactic note or what? It's obvious that Coates had planned out a much larger story, as evident by the mountains of loose ends left unresolved at the end of issue six. For example, we never even scratched the surface of who Ezra's super-P.O.C. were, whom seemed pretty rife for a spin-off at some point. And it seems like that Malik guy was being positioned as a Kingpin-like uber-villain, who probably would've commandeered scores of his own super-powered negroes  to do battle with Black Panther's all-Melanin Avengers. Now, I'm not saying the series had potential, per se, but it seems like the thing could've gone on for another 12 or so issues, easy. Hell, if you had a real comic writer at the helm, it might have even turned into a pretty fun little series. Alas, with Coates calling the shots, it's pretty much a guarantee the thing would've crashed into the ground in a hurry; shit, just half a dozen issues in and it was already running on fumes.

As for the rest of the creative team, the series was penciled by Butch Guice (the same guy who drew Micronauts back in the day), inked by Scott Hanna (who has inked pretty much everything) and (people of) colored by Dan Brown, who, ironically enough, is not brown, but white. Aesthetically, I've got nothing bad to say about the series. I mean, it's not the most amazing art you'll see in a comic book, but it's still pretty crisp and clean and never really devolves into that oh-so pretentious abstractionism that so many modern series wind up falling into. Tis a pity they weren't given a decent story to wrap their drawings around, though.

If you're looking for some painfully unaware, crypto-reverse-racist agitprop, you'll probably be disappointed here. That's not to say the series is devoid of some heavy-handed and clumsily ham-fisted lecturing (because lord knows, it isn't) but it seems like Coates never really had the momentum nor the space to really start hammering home the political message he wanted. Maybe if he had another five or six issues to work with he would've gone completely overboard, but as is, Black Panther & The Crew is hardly anything more than a crappy superhero ensemble origin yarn, with some woefully inarticulate "social commentary" wedged in there. So it's propaganda that's too pussy to come out and announce itself as propaganda, which I think we can all agree is pretty much the most insufferable kinda of propaganda there is.

All in all Black Panther & The Crew is pretty much what you'd expect it to be. It's bad, but it's not brain-breakingly bad, which makes the whole package all the more disappointing. It's such a horribly uneventful series, that doesn't excel at anything - or, really, rise above mediocrity whatsoever. Instead of being an all-time, monumental dud, it's just another boring, unremarkable Marvel offering with hardly any distinguishing characteristics.

Which, yeah, I suppose makes it the epitome of late 2010s, multiculturalism-uber-alles comic books, now that I think about it ...

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