Mayonnaise

Are you worried yet?  You probably should be, no one needs that much mayonnaise.

Comic Review: The Almighties #1

                Sam Johnson either really values my opinion or he’s a masochist.  You may remember Sam as the writer of Geek-Girl and Mr. Mash-up from the review I did a couple weeks ago.  While those comics were relatively well received, they were in no way pillars of creation, so I was a little surprised when I was contacted to review Johnson’s other book: The Almighties.  I am happy to give my feedback and to publicize his work in any way possible because there needs to be more people out there that are busting their ass to get noticed, and that aren’t afraid of a little constructive criticism to improve their craft.  That being said, let’s dive right in, but first, the official stuff:

The Almighties #1 is available in regular, Ltd. Variant, and Digital/Kindle editions at http://mikegagnon.wix.com/almighties

Cover:

                The cover, by Eleonora Kortsarz and Socrates Gucor is your pretty standard first issue team shot.  It shows the five man (well, three man, one woman, one werewolf) team posed like they are ready to go into battle, or at least ready in case a battle comes to them.  The quality of the illustration is fairly well done.  There could be a little more variation in the line weights to show depth and shadow, but all in all it’s not bad.  The characters all look different enough to be distinguished as different people (though the guy in the lower left has a decidedly “Liefeldian” mouth, which isn’t a great sign).  The helmet on the guy on the left looks like it was drawn on after figuring out what the rest of his head looked like, which is a great sign, and something you would think would be a standard practice (should be but isn’t always). 

I am not wild about how the werewolf is portrayed here.  The snout is so long that I thought it was initially a horse-type hybrid creature.  Once I knew what it was, I was a bit more accepting, but the design doesn’t scream werewolf to me.  Also, on the cover, the body hair is just represented as a series of lines.  While they are at least all going in logical directions, I would have rather seen less penwork here and instead have a nice solid outline of hair here, maybe utilizing the colorist more to provide the interior details of the body hair.  It’s just an idea, but one that would have been a bit less messy.  Right now, the hair looks almost like an afterthought which is a shame as the rest of the art on the cover is fairly well crafted.

                The one thing that perplexed me about the cover was what the guy on the lower left was holding.  We eventually learn that it’s a spit with gyro meat on it, but without knowing that going in, I had to try and guess (I never guessed spit with gyro meat).  Was it a bee-hive of some sort?  Mega Man’s arm cannon covered in feces?  I really wasn’t sure.  I realize that it’s an essential weapon of the character wielding it, but it just leads to confusion until we get a little backstory.  Something seems a bit off about the anatomy of the girl on the cover but she is covered up enough by other characters where anything that’s wrong is not readily apparent. 

7/10 – It’s a solid cover with decent coloring.  Some slight changes could have pushed it over the top but it definitely does the job of piquing my interest in the characters contained within.

Story:

                The story in Geek-Girl and Mr. Mash-up were the highlight of those books.  They were decently crafted tales that gave an idea that something larger was in the works without really spoonfeeding the reader the information.  Johnson and his co-writer (Mike Gagnon on the script) runs into trouble with this book though as he telegraphs a little too much and lacks any subtlety whatsoever.  I like the fact that he starts out in the “present” before travelling back in time to find out how we got there.  That’s a good technique and the fact that he uses it to show us the team assembled and in action before we travel back to learn who they are, while not entirely original, works incredibly well.  I was lost by the “Pimm’s” reference though, is that a brand of wine or something similar to Kool-Aid? 

                The inclusion of a drooling simpleton as the butler seemed a little ridiculous until the end, but even then it seemed unnecessary.  It feels like a lot of the book is full of unnecessary things and little tangents that feel like they didn’t need to be there.  This includes the revelation that Stefanos (the guy on the cover with the gyro meat) has to keep going to his restaurant to put the French fries on, even though “French fries” is apparently code for “meet with the president”.  Except it kind of doesn’t because then he says something to the president about his French fries burning.  My question is how does he get from outside his shop (where we see him dropped off) to the white house and back? 

We are not told the origin of everyone on the team in this issue, but we are given a peek into Ms. F and her life before superheroing, and it’s silly, almost as silly as her name which she says stands for “Ms. Free” or “Ms. Fun” because she’s a “swingin’ single” since her divorce from a controlling jerk husband.  This women’s empowerment that Johnson tries to force on us only goes as far as the first couple missions as she falls all over her teammate Maxi-Tron (which I can't read without thinking of a super-powered tampon), volunteering to help him check for testicular cancer.  Yup, that happened.  The whole exchange (which takes place over two missions) feels incredibly forced and if I was anyone else on that team I would have either quit or killed those two for talking like that.   

The fact that one of the groups that The Almighties are tracking down is called F.U.C.A.S. and they work with the television station that goes by the code name A.N.U.S. is just juvenile.  It feels like this comic is straddling the line between parody and legit superhero tale without taking the plunge to either side.  The Almighties need to go after the group F.U.C.A.S. (an animal rights group) because they blew up a building, killing an old man (who was apparently about to retire, which we learn in two of the most confusing panels in the comic).  We then cut back to the present and the action, which goes about a well as you would expect from a group of superheroes attacking a bunch of guys with ski-masks.  We also get our first mention of testicular cancer as Ms. F had a rabbit that died of testicular cancer.  The fact that this little nugget of information is divulged mid-punch is just silly. 

We are then transported immediately to their second assignment, a basement where apparently all of the aliens that have inhabited earth were gathering together for one night only to discuss their plans for world domination.  At this point, I was ready to call bullshit on the leader of this group.  It all seemed too dumb to be true and how these guys kept falling for it was sad.  What is even worse is the way Johnson tried to write the exchange between the black gangsters in the club.  I understand that he was trying to write a dialect, and probably make these guys seem like creeps so we didn’t mind if they got their asses kicked by the Almighties, but it seems unbelievable and honestly, a little offensive.  I don’t get offended easily, by anything, but these few pages had me feeling like I should apologize.  We do actually get to see The Almighties do some real fighting though, which is nice…until we get to the second exchange about testicular cancer where Maxi-tron turns to a puss because his grandfather had testicular cancer and Ms. F volunteers her services.  There had to have been a better way to manufacture a romance than this.  It seems cheap, creepy and wipes away any kid of girl-power good will that Johnson built up with his introduction of Ms. F. 

We are then transported to the third assignment that involves infiltrating a coffee shop that is surrounded by barbed wire and a large fence.  Sure seems like an evil mastermind compound to me right?  Not really.  It’s actually a totally legit coffee shop run by a bunch of black guys in the middle of a KKK-esque all white neighborhood.  Talk about not knowing your clientele.  The Almighties beat the tar out of these reputable business owners until a blonde-haired white guy parachutes in and tells everyone to “chillax” (I wish I was kidding about that).  President Obama then gets on the phone with Stefanos and tells him that the team has been doing the dirty work of some radical black person-hating bigot (because black people picked on him on the playground at school).  This surprises everyone because apparently everything that has been said was taken at face value, and no one suspected that this guy was full of shit.  Apparently all of the groups that they targeted were legit (even though the animal rights guys did kill someone in the explosion as stated - which is completely glossed over by the government by the way, and the “aliens” were clearly gangsters). 

After fighting this “evil mastermind’s” henchmen, (which includes a robot that looks like Hitler and the special ed guy that is injected with a serum turning him into a werewolf), the team enacts revenge on him by letting all of the black people he captured have their way with him.    

2/10 – There are way too many coincidences and unlikable characters here to make this a good story.  Everything that happens feels like it was thrown in to be convenient with no real forethought put into the story.  The characters are barely fleshed out and much of what is developed is just plain silly.

Art:

                There are three artists on this issue, Eleonora Kortsarz handles pages one through eleven, Pablo Zambrano handles pages twelve through twenty-two and D.C. White along with Zambrano handle pages twenty-three through twenty-eight.  You can definitely tell when we switch artists as the styles are considerably different.  The fact that the interiors are fully colored is nice, but it doesn’t necessarily do much to save the artwork from being unimpressive.  None of the artists go crazy with outlandish page designs, which is a huge bonus in my book.  They stuck to the basics and I think the book is better because of it. 

                That’s the thing, there is nothing truly “wrong” with the art.  It does lack a sense of dynamism though, even during the fight scenes where you would expect at least some level of that.  T here is an overabundance of mid-range camera shots, but they are broken up a bit here and there and we even  get some down-shots thrown in there.  The coloring is inconsistent as well.  I know, it’s done by two different people but I would hope that an editor would be able to catch that and at least ask for touch-ups.  In the beginning it is well done and serviceable, but as the artists change, the quality of the colors do as well. 

The fact that there are three jump-cuts in three panels makes this page uber confusing.  It's hard to blow something up and have us recognize it if we've never actually seen it whole (and no, writing lab in big blue letters as if that's all that survived the explosion does not help) 

This occurs over three separate battles, and just highlights how horrible the relationship between these two characters is.  Who talks like that?  It sounds like a transcipt from a porno.

Yup, the whitest guy in the room just said "Prez" Obama and "Chillax".  

And that's a werewolf and a Hitler robot because...of course it is

5/10 – It’s not the worst I have ever seen, by far, but it is closer to a fan-comic than a professional book.

Overall:  4/10 – If you want an Actuality Pres comic, I would still suggest picking up Geek-Girl.  The Almighties needs a lot of fine tuning before it is ready for public consumption in my opinion.  The fact that it came out before Geek-Girl does show me that Johnson has made significant strides as a writer and I am more interested in his new stuff.

Album Review: Black Sabbath – Never Say Die (1978)

Overview: 

                The wheels had finally come off the bus.  Between Ozzy quitting the band before recording the album (only to rejoin days before the recording process started, only to throw out all of the songs recorded with fill in vocalist Dave Walker) and rampant substance abuse that rendered the band ineffective for days on end, it’s a surprise that Never Say Die was actually created at all. 

Tracks you may know: 

“Never Say Die”:  The bass line is phenomenal, and the general musicianship is still as good as ever, but it’s in the same pop-infused mold that Technical Ecstasy adopted.  Iommi doesn’t sound as interested as he has in the past either, almost like he can see the writing on the wall and doesn’t want to put his best stuff in a sinking ship. 

Tracks you should know:

There are no tracks here that I would recommend.  I would be supremely disappointed if I was waiting at the record store in 1978 to buy this album and this is what I received.  

My personal favorite:

“Never Say Die”: And that’s only by virtue of a “best of the worst” kind of scoring system.

Album rating: 

                At this point, Ozzy leaving the band was the best for all parties involved as Dio came in to Black Sabbath and reenergized them, while Ozzy’s partnership with Randy Rhoades had the same effect.  This is not the best album in Sabbath’s catalog by a long shot.  Hell, it’s not even that good.  It does show where the band was at the time though, and how important it was for all parties involved to split up and try something different. 

2/10

Big Plans for Visa

I have no idea what the end game was for Sluggy's previous two schemes, but his plans for Visa will be revealed shortly so stay tuned.

Hell’s Kitchen Episode Twelve: A True Villain Emerges

                It could be said that this season of Hell’s Kitchen is filled with villains, almost like a Survivor-esque stunt of some sort.  I wouldn’t necessarily debate that point too much (though squeaky voice and Mr. Mohawk have done a good job of playing the game the right way, much like old guy (pour one out!) did during his time in the kitchen).  This episode took a WWE-type turn that really drove home the fact that one of the contestants is a true “bad guy” (at least in terms of this show).  Who is that chef?  Like the producers of Hell’s Kitchen I will string you along for a bit before I tell you, unlike the producers of Hell’s Kitchen, I’ll actually tell you.

                We start off this episode with Ramsay telling the red team to take their heads out of their collective asses and come to a consensus as to who is going over to the blue kitchen.  No more of this “we picked a name out of a hat because we all wanted to be a hero” bullshit.  The red team comes to the consensus that they are exiling fat black girl to the island of misfit toys that is currently the blue team.  The blue team, obviously, can’t be happier that they are getting the queen of the hissy fit on their team.  Fat black girl does some bitching about not wanting to lose challenges, blah blah blah (at this point I have to tune her out or start sharpening my toothbrush for ear drum penetration).

                The next morning, the chefs are greeted with their next reward challenge.  They will be cooking an ethnic dish in a head-to-head style competition between the teams. Ramsay asks one of the chefs who they want to cook against, then they spin the “Wheel-O-Countries” and land on a type of food.  The four cuisines that are selected are Indian, Greek, Thai and Japanese.  Of course blonde girl has to say something stupid and end it with “konichiwa” like she’s in the back of a middle school history class.  She’s dumb, and I hate her probably more than anyone I have ever witnessed in this competition.  Sometimes being a chef means you have to be a bad person (well, you don’t have to but a lot of them are) but she takes the taco. 

                We also get the standard “I’ve never cooked that kind of dish before” from at least half of the chefs.  I’ll admit, I’ve never cooked any of those kinds of dishes before either, but I’m also not on a show where I’m expected to know what I’m doing.  I’ll give you a quick run-down of how the challenge goes, leaving out the point where blonde girl is perplexed by the rice cooker and squeaky voice burns her rice for her Indian dish.  Mr. Mohawk beats squeaky voice on the Indian dish, and I’m not sure if the rice would have saved her as the judges (Ramsay and a big cheese at the Rachel Ray magazine) really liked Mr. Mohawk’s dish. From there, it’s all downhill for the blue team.  Mixed up Cyndi beats guy that doesn’t get a petname in the Greek challenge (not by much, and he’s clearly the second best chef on the blue team), fat black girl gets trounced by skinny black girl when it comes to Thai food (mainly because fat black girl’s dish doesn’t taste like Thai food and the big cheese from the Rachel Ray magazine nearly had an orgasm while eating the dish from skinny black girl), and loud guy gets beat by blonde girl on Japanese cuisine.  The best part is that when she picked him for the head-to-head, he got all butt-hurt and couldn’t believe that she would do so, that apparently it was surely going to be a loss for her.  Granted, this was before they knew that they were cooking Japanese food, and way before he decided to place overdone, dry chicken in his dish (how often do you see chicken in Japanese cooking? (not often).  His dish was terrible and the red team rightfully won this round.  It sucks because Mr. Mohawk seems like the strongest chef in the competition at this point (followed very closely by squeaky voice) but he’s stuck with the single worst team in the history of this show.  I feel bad for him, but at the same time, he signed up to be on Hell’s Kitchen, so I don’t feel too bad for him.

                The red team gets a $500.00 shopping spree ($2000.00 total split four ways) which Ramsay just takes out of his pocket and hands over.  This fucking guy.  I bet he gets off on moments like this – that and calling people donkey.  The blue team gets to prep both kitchens for dinner service that night, while also polishing the stemware and moving in many, many cases of wine.  It’s not the worst punishment, but it doesn’t make it any easier that fat black girl just doesn’t want to help.  The guys move all the wine in by themselves and when they sit down to clean the stemware they are accosted by her bitching about their kitchen and their cooking practices, with that being the reason they keep losing.  She’s talking like her dish was perfect and everyone else let her down.  Someone needs to just hit her.  Please. 

                The red team comes back and gets dressed for the dinner service.  As Hell’s Kitchen is about to open, fat black girl has still not finished prepping her station.  To top it off, she won’t let anyone else help her, and once the cooking starts she continues to try and go it alone, refusing help from anyone else, regardless of the fact that she’s sinking like a stone.  She’s not doing well at all, and I’d like to say that the other members of her team pick up the slack and are able to finish dinner service successfully, but they never get the chance.  Ramsay kicks them all out before they can even send out all of the appetizers.

                Over in the red kitchen it’s not much better.  This is where our true villain emerges.  Blonde girl does what she always does and just goes about her business, expecting other people to play catch-up, and letting them take the fall when stuff goes wrong.  This week’s recipient of that is skinny black girl.  She is on the fish station which means that she needs to send up the scallops to coincide with the rest of the appetizers (a station being manned by blonde girl).  Of course, this is when blonde girl pulls her shit and doesn’t tell skinny black girl that her food is almost ready to go, which means that skinny black girl has to drop her scallops and rush them.  Instead of facing the wrath of Ramsay for not coming up together, and then being able to turn that around on blonde girl and her poor leadership, skinny black girl decides that the best course of action is to only cook the scallops on one side and…hope that Ramsay doesn’t see it?  Really?  That’s your endgame here?  Hoping that the chef with the highest standards of any I have ever seen doesn’t perform the simple task of flipping over the scallops?  I get it, it’s a spur of the moment decision and it’s one thing to be able to watch it play out in front of you on the television and a completely different thing to actually be there when it’s happening.  That being said, it was still a stupid move, though one that was predicated by blonde girl being a horrible person.  To top it off, blonde girl gets in the “confessional” and talks even more about how it’s not her job to help anyone along.  I can’t wait until Ramsay exposes her for the fraud she really is.

                Somehow, someway, the appetizers leave the kitchen which I guess just proves that being a horrible person and a terrible leader doesn’t mean you can’t cook.  When entrees start coming out, Ramsay loses it though.  The fish is raw.  This also falls on skinny black girl, and it is actually all her fault this time.  At this point, Ramsay has already banished the blue team, so his tolerance level is at a low point.  You can see him start to crack before he just kicks the red team out.  It’s almost like watching Roger Rabbit drink alcohol.

                The best part of this episode is watching the chef on each team that is the absolute worst (blonde girl and fat black girl) try and explain that they aren’t.  It’s a little easier for blonde girl because she makes other people fuck up while fat black girl just does it all herself, but still.  Trying to say that she is a better all-around chef than skinny black girl?  Come on.  Luckily the red team puts her up for elimination anyway.  Fat black girl goes absolutely bananas when the possibility of being put up for elimination comes up.  It apparently doesn’t matter that the dinner service didn’t even make it past her station.  She keeps saying that loud guy was sabotaging her (which he denies and we are not shown any evidence to support her claim).  She screams and storms off, saying that she will not be put up for elimination, which is silly because she is obviously outvoted.  We get to elimination and blonde girl doesn’t understand why she is being put up (Ramsay doesn’t either but he also hasn’t seen the tape of how truly horrible she is) and when Mr. Mohawk replies that fat black girl is being put up for elimination she responds with “no”.  As if that will save her.  She’s acting like a fucking child and it’s such a relief when she gets sent home.  No more bitching and complaining, no more talk about her hoo-ha, as one of the blue team exclaims after being dismissed “ding dong the witch is dead”. 

                Next episode claims that one of the chefs does something truly horrible and blah blah blah, you can’t trust the promos for this show, so instead just watch it to see Ramsay lose his mind.

Album Review: Black Sabbath – Technical Ecstasy (1976)

Overview: 

                According to pretty much everyone, Sabotage was the last “great” Black Sabbath album, as tension within the band and substance abuse had a hand in derailing one of the most successful bands of the era.  The entire album is much lighter in nature, not nearly as gloomy as past albums were.  Hell, it even included a piano-led song that would sound more appropriate on a Beatles record than a Sabbath one.  The band still show they are experts on their respective instruments, but the cohesion as a band is not as evident as it used to be, with many of the songs almost feeling like they are going through the motions and not be nearly as mentally involved as they were in the past.

Tracks you may know: 

“It’s Alright”:  I like the song, just not as a Sabbath song.  It would make a great Beatles tune and you can see their influence here.  Bill Ward does a great job both on the drums and singing here, but it just feels like the least Black Sabbath in an album full of non-Black Sabbath tracks. 

“Dirty Women”:  A staple of the live set, this track is one of the most “Sabbathy” sounding ones on the record (probably why it has passed the test of time.

Tracks you should know:

“All Moving Parts (Stand Still)”:  It has a nice, bass-led groove to it and Ozzy doesn’t oversell the vocals.  This is a good song, and might be a highlight on anyone else’s album. 

“She’s Gone”:  It honestly feels more like Ozzy’s solo stuff (especially his stuff from Blizzard of Oz) than it does a Sabbath track.  It’s sad and gloomy, just not with the same weight that you would find in an earlier Sabbath release.

My personal favorite:

“Dirty Women”:  This is the only song that really feels like it could be transplanted onto any of Sabbath’s later records (anything post Master of Reality).  It has the right tempo, not upbeat or poppy like “Rock ‘N’ Roll Doctor” or straight up out of character like “It’s Alright”, to be a classic Sabbath song. 

Album rating: 

                It’s not the worst album I have ever heard, but it’s not up to the high bar Sabbath set for itself in the earlier stages.  I don’t think it’s entirely the fault of drugs or band in-fighting for the poor musical direction that this album took.  As other bands were popping up that were going heavier as a result of Sabbath’s influence, they mellowed out considerably.  Unfortunately Technical Ecstasy is more filler than hit.

4/10

The Problem with Wiener Dogs

It's true, they pee on everything.  If you own a wiener dog and haven't been peed on yet, buy a poncho because the monsoon is coming.