Comments on: Comic Critics #4!

By: Jono11

Jono11 — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 01:01:09 +0000

Winick’s getting better again with GA/BC. I’m really digging the book. I think he just needed to take a breather from everything and hit the reset button and ask himself what the hell he was doing.

And writing superhero books doesn’t preclude him from indie creator-owned stuff.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:48:39 +0000

Exiles was a lot of fun when he was writing it, since as history has shown he’s not the best person to be messing around with shared universes (… having Black Lightning kill someone about three issues into his Green Arrow run, etc.). So giving him a title where he just gets to mess around with his own fantasies of what “should” have happened works out.

His Green Lantern? Pretty good, and a worthy continuation to Marz’ defining run.

After that… yikes. He brings Jason Todd back in Batman (not paying attention to everyone saying “okay, the one chance for Jason to come back and be accepted was in Hush… if it happens now, it’ll be cheap”), turns Black Lightning into a murderer, sends Outsiders flying off a cliff after a pretty good first year (Raney leaving killed the book dead, in retrospect), and then Titans… well, best not to acknowledge that even exists.

What else was there? I guess that Superman / Shazam three-parter he did wasn’t awful, but it broke up Rucka’s great run on Adventures and that hurt.

By: Matt Sheridan

Matt Sheridan — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:01:37 +0000

Barry Ween kind of looked like ass, but it was always a damned entertaining book. And it pretty obviously had nothing to do with Jimmy Neutron.

I’ve generally dug Winick’s superhero stuff, but I do admit, it hasn’t really stood out from the crowd as much as I expected when he first started down that path. If he went back to doing his own stuff again–like Barry Ween or something new–yeah, I’d be pretty excited about that.

By: Conor E

Conor E — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:44:23 +0000

I say this as someone that LOVED Winnick’s Exiles: Outsiders and Green Arrow were just painful. What happened?

By: The Mad Monkey

The Mad Monkey — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:28:20 +0000

This may be the worst possible thing to say about Judd Winick…but, it really, sincerely is what I think of him.
Everytime I see his name, I think of Rob LIefeld.
‘Nuff said.

By: Aaron Poehler

Aaron Poehler — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:14:06 +0000

This comic was correct on every count.

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:15:24 +0000

…or at least go back to Marvel and leave my Titans alone.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:23:28 +0000

Barry Ween always struck me as completely charmless; the whole thing just felt like an unfunny, obscenity-laden pastiche of Calvin and Hobbes and South Park.

I mean, maybe watching a cartoonish-looking 10 year old call someone a “fucking horse-cum guzzler” before shooting them in the head with a laser gun is something someone would find funny when you’re 14. Then again, maybe that’s intentional, because the whole thing just felt like the work of a teenager trying so hard to be edgy that they forgot to be clever about it.

By: Dan Bailey

Dan Bailey — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:04:39 +0000

>>Ronald Reagan was a Democrat!

Actually, I’m pretty sure he *was* … before his lobotomy.

By: M Bloom

M Bloom — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:10:28 +0000

Two words for you Craig:

Chuck Austen.

By: J to the AAP

J to the AAP — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:36:24 +0000

Hah, I just caught the third one (so the slip-up is in the text, not the title), which was quite good!

Next week i might comment on this one !

By: J to the AAP

J to the AAP — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:14:26 +0000

I always saw Jimmy Neutron as a far less funnier or cool looking Dexter’s Laboratory. I haven’t read Barry Ween, so I can’t say much about that one.

By the way, why does the title say #4? My first thought was “when did I miss one?” but the text says “check out the first two strips at the archive”.

By: Lynxara

Lynxara — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 05:53:56 +0000

I’ve got to say, Brandon, I don’t quite dig the YouTube-type framing gimmick. It’s forced you into the nine-panel grid, a technique that requires really strong art skills to pull off. The art in this comic wasn’t bad, but I did feel the repetitive of angle drew excessive attention to a general weakness in the facial expressions. I’m not saying “don’t do it again”, but I’d pay close attention to how expressive the characters were being.

Also, while I notice this is basically the exact same joke as the first comic’s Ang Lee gag, the execution here is much stronger. That’s an impressive amount of improvement in just four strips, so kudos!

By: mightygodking

mightygodking — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 04:23:04 +0000

Stupid italics.

By: mightygodking

mightygodking — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 04:22:47 +0000

Barry Ween is overrated too. There, I said it.

Woo! It’s Say Things That Are Wrong Day! Ronald Reagan was a Democrat! Trees are made of cheese! Robotman is neither a robot nor a man, but instead a gopher!

By: Craig

Craig — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:46:14 +0000

M Bloom, I want to implore you (HA!) to find a writer whose body of work consists of such terrible decisions as making Grace and Thunder suddenly lesbians One Year Later, giving every third character AIDS or HIV or some other STD, forcing a political agenda (one that I mostly agree with, mind you, but it was forcing nonetheless) down the reader’s throat in Green Arrow, and now writing the saddest excuse for a plot in that reeking pile of trash published monthly as Titans. I’ve never seen one writer match Winick blow-for-blow with his terrible “plot twists” that almost always involve homosexuality, STDs, or both, or with his giant gaps of logic that conveniently set up wherever he’s going with his story (his ability to create such gaps, by the way, is the envy of Joe Quesada, I hear… at least, I had One More Day of hearing it, if you catch my meaning!).

Barry Ween is overrated too. There, I said it. The man’s best works are Pedro and Me, and standing awkwardly in the background while Puck’s antics were going on. He’s added nothing else of value to popular culture.

By: Doug Atkinson

Doug Atkinson — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:22:31 +0000

Jimmy Neutron first appeared in 2000; Barry Ween came out in 1999. The boy inventor archetype goes back to the mid-19th century, though, so neither series was really forging wildly new ground.

By: .

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 01:33:10 +0000

Really? Jimmy Neutron came out in 1996. When was Ween released?

By: FunkyGreenJerusalem

FunkyGreenJerusalem — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:29:20 +0000

Iâ€™m surprised no one has commented on the video framing technique yet.

Although video reviews strike me as odd – they make me feel like an old fogey for fearing such things – I like the technique… except for the third panel, as it breaks up the flow, and just doesn’t feel right.

Other than that, funny stuff.

(I thought you went easy on him).

By: Mike Loughlin

Mike Loughlin — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:16:36 +0000

Winnick used to be good, consistently- both Barry Ween and Exiles were a lot of fun, and I liked Green Lantern for awhile (although that might put me in the minority). Road Trip was a well-told family drama. Pedro & Me is one of those comics I can get non-comics readers to read, and I’ve gotten positive feedback from them. Blood & Water and Caper were enjoyable.

Then… lame comic after lame comic, with a few bright spots. The bizarrely aweful Outsiders is the worst I’ve read. He hasn’t had a consistently good series in years.

Anyway, funny strip!