First, a note of thanks and recognition to my ghost writer. Oh, she does not like that but I do not like deceptions. Or not much. Besides which she is as well known as I am and she was there but I will tell it all as it happened to me and maybe if we put in some steamy parts she will consent to author those from her side.

It was sticky nasty hot. It often is. We were all dripping salt water in our gear like we had just swum to the game. Nothing new there. May I mention a few names long buried in a death toll of millions? My parents were there, of course. Marion-Anne and Phillip Gordon. On the team and in the stands were quite nearly everyone I knew. On the scrimmage line; Weston, Marley, Michaels, Farley, Gibbs, Sari, Major, “Deet” Denton, Holska, Marks and of course Gordon. Only Gordon survives.

There is the snap and I am running, sideways then down. If you have never played ball at that level, with all the gear and everything you can hardly imagine the noise. You hear it on the sidelines but in the middle of it you can hear nothing but the thud of bodies colliding and your own heart so it was a long second or two before I realized that utter quiet had just burst into my head. Gibbs had laid a perfect spiral where he had thought I could run but a couple defenders got between me and the ball. This is classic Flash territory, man, I am loving it. Charging down, I see a man going for the interception. No, not hardly. So I leap. I guess I could lie since there is no one left to call me a liar but I missed it. I tipped it off so there was no interception but it was incomplete. Let the ref have his final call. But that jump put me in the air for one brief second and that was the second when a good fraction of Tampa died in mid breath.

Landing was weird. The wind got knocked out of me pretty good but it didn’t keep me from noticing how strange the grass was. It looked waxy and whitish like someone had gone crazy lining the field but also it was as brittle as if it had been dead for two months. Only then I felt the silence and saw a man with a camera holding stock-still. I looked at him and heard no click. Then I realized that there was no way I would hear that click because of the cheering. Then I noticed there was no cheering and felt immediately puking ill. I popped up and turned to the stands and you know what I saw.

It took a good few moments of hard looking but I was certain that no one was moving in the stands. A couple things fell over; drinks and papers and such. Then one fellow who was standing on the middle stairs slowly teetered and tumbled down setting off an avalanche of a dozen or so corpses, for that is what they now were. I ran up to the men nearest me mostly lying on their sides but frozen in mid step or mid grab. I pulled on their chin guards to look them in the eyes and they were all cloudy like the eyes of unfresh fish. Tearing off my own equipment I went up to the stands. My folks were there alright. My dad had participated in the tumbling act previously mentioned. He loved joining in. My mother looked like she was happy when it happened so that is something. My girlfriend, Margeret, had an intent look on her face. I think she saw me miss that pass and didn’t much like it. Now let us move on from the field.

A car crashed into the little house across the street from the field gate so I just ran to the sound. I pulled open the door but the old man driving was in the same state as everyone else; freeze-dried in the position of his last act. I shut the car off and could hear a TV broadcast coming from inside the house. I pounded on the door and screamed hello. It was unlocked. Again, the two people in front of that TV were as still as stones and just as much alive. But the TV. It was on some cable news crapola but it was live and talking about whatever  but going on quite normally. It doesn’t make much sense I guess but I grabbed up the phone and called 911. I can’t blame them now but at the time I cursed the dead police across town for letting it roll over to the voice.

Only then really did I get something of a handle on my situation. Before I could form the nasty thought that I was the last man left alive the TV, god bless it, had shown me that the world was continuing about its business though everyone I could lay eyes on was bizarrely dead. I ran out and to the next house, the next car, the next body. For hours I guess I did that until I noticed a jet in the air, then a smaller plane and shortly a helicopter that settled down in a churchyard right in front of me.

.. ..

A couple cops came out and checked me over quickly like a cow headed to the butcher’s and asked me, reasonably, just what had happened. I don’t think I said much but the next few days events are known to all. I was the sole survivor, not just in Tampa Oh, no. Tampa was the first but then hours later came Tacoma. Then Mindanao. Of course you know there were ten such incidents as we called them then, in a perfect 24 hour cycle. At first no one in authority was saying it but it was plain to anyone. This was no natural event. It was an attack and a leisurely one that simply let the earth rotate under the barrel of some distant and invisible gun picking targets at whim.

That terrible weapon we all know now as the pulse bomb; an invisible blob of energy that, striking the surface, releases a rhythmic wave of radiation that momentarily stops all motion of all water in anything in contact with the surface. I was out of contact with the surface and was saved. I was the only one to survive who did not have at least one foot outside the ravenously precise radius in all of the ten attacks. Total dead was near six million. In a flash.

But now I was in the hands of the authorities. And it is a forest of hands when something like this happens, many of them hold microphones. Others weapons. Many hold medical instruments of one sort or another. Every time I showed my face in public it was a worse scrum than ever I was in on the field. People whose loved ones had been turned to statues, perhaps before their eyes reached out to me over the cordons and past the bodyguards. Sometimes I touched them. Not often, but a few times.

I was told little of what was being discussed and decided. The Silent Day had passed, killed millions and then, nothing. Not a thing else happened except there were ten perfectly round and precise dead holes on the earth though they didn’t stay dead. Observation quickly showed that the plants recovered quickly. Even thrived. The animals’ condition, including the talking animals, proved permanent. The news shows were full every day of “experts” weaving elaborate suppositions into some plausible explanation. I was tested, interrogated, imaged, bled, dyed… did I mention quarantined for a few days? Of course quarantined. But nothing gave anything close to an answer. The situation was becoming dire. Rumors of a super-weapon test gone wrong swept across the globe. Nothing else anyone wanted to think made any sense unless it was the very hand of God. And if that were the case, why pick on Tampa? Or Krakow? But no one was in a mood for quietly pondering the possibles. Riots demanding “The Truth” broke out in India and Russia. In America things were more orderly but still there was growing suspicion that this was some evil or stupidity of man’s. And of course it proved to be. Just not men of Earth.

If the government monkeys in charge of me were not so certain that they represented the top of the Authority Food Chain they might have never put me on that plane and, obviously, things would have been different. Security was not really considered a big issue for a plane in flight at that time. Live and learn.

So some genius in Colorado wants to talk to me in person. I realized after the fact that this was the first flight I had taken since my name was in the news. Be careful what you tell the public, friends. You never know who is listening.

Also, you never know who will be the last person you ever meet so try to make a good impression. I must admit I failed on this occasion. This was the first time I ever laid eyes on one Miss Dale Arden.

And the first time she had laid eyes on me. In person. Being in the center of a media storm one gets to believing all the great things everyone says about you which is the surest and shortest path to the destruction of whatever meager virtues you may actually possess. You get used to people doing things for you and giving things to you. You get used to women climbing over each other to get to you and when you run up against one who does not… Who refuses to see the mighty gift you are to reality, it grates. And it affects your behavior. No, sorry Dale. This is not the moment where you get to say it your way. Maybe later. It should be enough that I am willing to admit, even given the weight of the previous weeks, that I was a real ass. Enough said.

Except on the subject of Miss Dale Arden. I’ll skip the aesthetic descriptions. Let’s just say if we make a movie of this she will have to be portrayed by a leading beauty. But not only that. Miss Arden, now Doctor Arden, was then a masters candidate in physics at MIT, research assistant, calculator, aid and niece to Doctor Emil Zarkhov, another name you may have heard. She also lettered in swimming and lacrosse. One moral of our story will prove to be, don’t discount sports in an education, even that of young ladies.

But for now our lives were not so much different than they had been before The Silent Day; we were just ten or so people, including cops and security of various types, getting on a smallish plane to attend a meeting. I don’t think that meeting actually met.

I never was much for flying, imagine that. And the smaller the plane the worse the experience except, wonder of wonders, our super-special delegation was spared the indignities of  the metal detector and the pat-down. I remember the take-off seemed very fast. Faster than a drag racer. I guess government planes have a little more punch than the ordinary jet. But it was just us once we got up in the air. They could have had fighters with us but they could not have done anything. Not five minutes after we had come to a level flight we all felt a strange humming in the floor, in our seats and even more loudly resonating from the glass in the windows. Everyone was darting their eyes around as if a snake had been sighted in the cabin. The captain said something over the PA… everything is fine or some such. It is a shame this man’s final act was a transparent lie. Nothing was fine, not inside that plane. One of the security men stood and drew his gun out wincing in pain and holding his head. I am glad he didn’t just start shooting. Others seemed to be having reactions of pain or delirium or both. Then, just like that, it was dark.

Stars shined through the window. We were far, far further above the earth than was wise in a small passenger plane. We were in orbit or nearly, somehow, and being drawn, not slowly, up to a great open bay that closed beneath us.

The darkness was utter. All sound stopped. The thousand tiny lights that indicate the plane or anything else is electronically alive were out. I heard the clicking of switches, a couple fellows trying flashlights and the overheads. Finally a female voice called out, “Everyone just stay calm, stay right where you are.” I could hear her paw along the seats to the cockpit door and call through it. No one answered but we seemed to be past our need for a pilot. Another female voice said, “Doctor, are you alright?” It was Dale of course. She always called him Doctor in public. A plane in the belly of a spaceship is still public. Manners first.

I wish I could tell you a tale of my first experience of spaceflight that included bobble-headed aliens and solarscapes but the simple fact is that once we were buttoned up in the hold of The Righteous Will, which proved to be the name of the ship, we were put out like so many candles. Mathematics told us later we were in a voyage of some weeks.

One of the great things about comics are alternate-reality scenarios. The No Man’s Land series, which spans four reasonably thick volumes, is an excellent specimen, offering most (if not all) of the significant Batman villains, while providing a fresh look at relatively stale heroes including Batman, Commissioner Gordon, Oracle, and Huntress.

The premise is simple: Gotham City has suffered several major catastrophes, which are covered in a separate story arc aptly named Batman: Cataclysm, and has been left to rot by the US government. We’re told in flashback that there were significant political debates and a mass evacuation, but in the end the seedier, poorer, unlucky, and more stubborn elements stayed in the ruined city. The isolation is akin to Snake Plissken’s predicaments in Escape from New York and Escape from LA. As a result a new pecking order takes hold: tribal gangs. The gangs vie for territory and inevitably brush up against each other.

Unlike traditional comic story arcs, which generally have a single super-complicated story line, No Man’s Land approaches the premise with an episodic style. As events unfold they impact the future, but everything is told through vignettes.

The most interesting vignette is first in the collection and features Commissioner Gordon as the leader of the Blue Boys. Essentially the remains of Gotham’s police force have formed a gang. While Jim Gordon’s intentions are good, his police behave exactly like criminals: they forage for supplies, tag territory, and kill rivals when necessary. This story line revisits a central Batman philosophical question: do the ends justify the means? In the story these questions are raised bluntly: there is no more official law, so what gives Gordon’s gang its authority? Throughout this particular episode Batman is distinctly absent, a ploy to make the reader wonder if the Dark Knight has abandoned his city.

The vignettes remain interesting through the end of the volume, but never recapture their initial power. All in all, Batman: No Man’s Land is an engaging post-apocalyptic read.

Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is in its fourth edition (but fifth incarnation) since 1974. I’ve played three incarnations: 2nd, 3.5, and 4th. I’ve got to say that the fourth edition does one thing very well.

For anyone unfamiliar, a table top role-playing game (RPG), like D&D, uses a pen, character sheet(s), a series of books, and a set of dice. The set of dice consists of: 1 four-sided, 1 six-sided, 2 ten-sided, 1 twelve-sided, and 1 twenty-sided die. Dice are also abbreviated “D” as in D20 for a twenty-sided die. You might laugh at this now, but one day you’ll be in a comic shop on the wrong side of the tracks and knowing what a D20 is might help you make a saving throw against a band of asthmatic angry nerds.

D&D, and similar RGPs, are played with one person running the world and a group of players going through the world. The concept is that the players will have their characters act according to their personalities and shared experiences. For example, a brooding solitary dwarf will warm up and make friends with the plucky tiefling after they save each other’s lives from a nest of giant spiders. Or as is more common with my current D&D 4th edition group, they will buy each other prostitutes once they return to town.

RPGs are as much a part of comic culture as comics themselves because they share space in the same shops. While there are purists, comic readers who hate RPG-ers and vice versa, for the most part anyone into one has at least tried the other. In fact I became interested in comics because I was into Star Wars RPG as a teenager.

The 4th edition D&D is a great miniatures game. The publisher, Wizards of the Coast, has taken a lot of the ambiguity out of the game by instituting a standard series of measurements. This sound logical, but is a huge shift away from 3.5 D&D where things were vague and left to the discretion of the dungeon master, or DM. (A DM is responsible for making the world around the players.) In 3.5, a player would need to ask the DM if he or she could do something; now the player simply counts squares.

While many old school D&D players and DMs are unhappy with the shift, I happen to love it. Currently, I am the DM for a monthly group of mid-twenty-somethings. Not forcing the DM (me) to make a nit-picky decision every twenty seconds, and not forcing the players to ask a nit-picky question every twenty seconds, allows us to focus on the role-playing aspect of the game.

I would say the band of greedy anti-heroes I’m DM-ing now is the best its ever been strictly because the new rules let them focus. I’ve actually seen players do things that are completely illogical from a tactical standpoint because they’re so focused on their role. It’s a beautiful thing for a DM to watch and makes all those hours spent building dungeons pay off.

So my hat goes off to you, Wizards of the Coast, for a ballsy shift in the RPG paradigm that really paid off.

Over the last decade Penny Arcade has been providing social commentary to a niche market over the Internet. I’ve been a fan since I was introduced to the comic in 2001. Their main focuses are video games and the surrounding culture, a truly vast and encompassing topic when you consider how little the Associated Press actually covers related issues other than addiction and violence. Gabe and Tycho, the artist’s and writer’s pen-names, are still making me and many other people laugh while making some good points.

The beautiful thing about Penny Arcade is the insightful nature of the comic. They don’t simply make a joke at the expense of the video game (or other “nerdy”) industry, but try to provide some commentary.

I credit their success to the dynamic contrast of the two primary characters: Gabe and Tycho. They are a part of fractured stereotypes. Gabe represents a classic fan boy, someone who doesn’t analyze any experience beyond the enjoyment factor. Things can be stupid, ridiculous, and over the top even for the fantastic genre, but he will love it anyway. I went to school with many people like him. Each one identifies with a certain aspect of the fantastic genre and any time that aspect (wizard, android, werewolf, etc.) is represented they instantly take up the cause. Conversely, Tycho is an intellectual. He loves the fantastic but adheres to an artistic standard; he’s never mentioned them but I’d assume the basics such as Neil Gaimen, Ray Bradbury, Samuel R. Delany, and J.R.R. Tolkien would be a fair representation. If the content goes too far into the nonsensical, Tycho rejects it. In this way he is a tortured patron (and because of the comic, a tortured artist as well). He can’t not try something but knows that the experience may offend him to the point of physical pain. The six part Witch-a-lock comic does a good job displaying the dynamic. But the subject matter is fictitious. A more realistic example is this recent comic in which Gabe and Tycho are discussing the premise of a video game based on Dante’s Inferno. That’s right, there is a video game based on The Divine Comedy. I haven’t played it, but I’m going to eventually.

In a micro-sample sort of way, struggle between Gabe and Tycho is representative of the struggle within most, if not every, contemporary artist: high art vs. commercialism. Do you make art to sell? Or do you make art for the sake of art?

The back-and-forth over art is roughly 40% of the overall comic. Business commentary is about 30%. And the final 30% is zany antics. The success of the comic is purely its point of view: the common gamer. I can’t say common man because gamers can be girls and regardless of gender are typically an educated astute audience. Furthermore, their emotional involvements with the gaming community is substantial, meaning a game being announced (a company saying they’re going to try and make a game based on X) can be received like news of a pregnancy; the release as a birth; and cancellation can be as devastating as a miscarriage. Please note an abortion can only occur if the company makes a crappy game — generally a poorly done sequel of a popular game.

What makes Penny Arcade amazing is its ability to concisely cover any given topic in three cells.  The interesting thing is the fan base it has developed is divided based on insider knowledge. Every comic assumes you know what they’re talking about. And most of the time I don’t have a clue. I read Penny Arcade to find out what’s going on in the world of video games (and a few other sites). So Tycho (and occasionally Gabe) write a blog describing the basis for the material and usually a few links to help you investigate. After I became familiar with the text the comic’s role and the blog’s role reversed themselves. I mean no offense but both contributors digress drastically in their blogs. Often going from coherent to purple-prose-esque lunacy inside of three or four paragraphs. Still you get the jist of what’s going on.

It’s worth noting that the focus has sharpened over the years. In the early 2000s random comics would drift in and while they were funny they weren’t as impressive. Here are a few of my favorites, which friends and I still quote today: bears, wangs, fruit fucker, fruit fucker prime, etc., etc., etc.

All their comics are collected in volumes, which are available from their website as well as Barnes and Noble (I have actually seen them in the stores). I’ve been reading this strip for almost ten years and I hope they keep informing and entertaining me for the next ten.

Just Fantastic appears the second and fourth Wednesday of the month, at least in theory.

I don’t read newspapers. It’s not personal. I started reading on a computer when I was really young and never looked back. Consequently certain features never make it through my front door, specifically comic strips. So, when John McPherson’s Close to Home made its big debut in my hometown paper, which I assume it did at some point in the late 1990s, I was completely unaware. But January 2010, when I was sifting through the calendars in the 50% off bin at Barnes and Noble, I found a Close to Home calendar and bought it. My other option was a girl’s college survival guide. And I don’t need any beauty tips.

Close to Home (CtH) is a single cell comic that is generally social commentary with a dash of comedy. The world is usually exaggerated in a small way. More to the point, the most successful comics exaggerate real life in a small way. This is in stark contrast to the reigning single cell comic The Far Side, which usually wildly exaggerated.

CtH is art of the contemporary middle range. While it lacks the scale and power of a complete graphic novel, it does cause the reader to think for a moment, to contemplate the joke. For example, an image of a widow spinning casket with the caption: “He’s credited with inventing the game ‘spin the bottle’ way back in the ’30s.” Maybe an amusing joke, but the underlying commentary is that a person is only remembered for his or her greatest accomplishment. For example, Bob Barker hosted six TV shows over the course of his career, but he’ll only be remembered for The Price is Right. Any family, his real personality, or a run on the briefly lived Simon Says (some flop game show from the early 1970s) don’t factor into his legacy in any serious way. (Yes, I know he’s still alive.) Conversely, it implies that someone who didn’t invent spin the bottle or host anything won’t be remembered for anything. And from there my mind wanders for another ten to thirty minutes, musing, chuckling, and occasionally coming up with a story idea.

I’m glad I found this gem in the bargain bin. While I’m not going to subscribe to a print newspaper or buy a collection, CtH brings a moment of much-needed humor into my workday.

Just Fantastic appears the second and fourth Wednesdays of every month.

I read this graphic novel last night at Barnes and Noble while waiting for my friend to show up. It was short, about under 100 pages, mostly filled with gun fights and explosions. Yet, the experience was satisfying enough for me to seriously consider buying comics based on other canceled shows I enjoyed; specifically Futurama.

 In addition to superheroes graphic novels are a favorite medium of animated and/or science fiction TV shows that have been canceled. It’s a fact of life. In rarer instances the TV show isn’t canceled but the fan base is large enough to support the additional medium, for example The Simpsons have been publishing graphic novels since the early 1990s. Serenity, Vol. 1: Those Left Behind is a continuation of the Firefly TV series created by Joss Whedon that aired on Fox.

For anyone unfamiliar, Firefly was a show about a band of smuggler-gunmen who flew around in a spaceship named Serenity. Thematically it was a western in space– some of it worked for (dialogue and wardrobe) and some of it didn’t (repeater rifles and occasionally horses). They had a half season of adventures before Fox canned them and a follow-up movie that was a financial disappointment.

Honestly, I’ve always looked down my nose at these knock-offs. But it was nice to see Mal and the gang tearing it up in outer-space again. The storyline is a standard western heist accented by science fiction elements.

It’s not art and I won’t try to defend it, but in some ways the concept works better in the graphic medium than it did on TV. Things are just more forgiving. My advice is if you loved a show and watched it die check and see if the writers or creator release a series of graphic novels. While it won’t replace the time slot left in your heart it could be a pleasant surprise.

Yeah, there are some spoilers, but it won’t affect your read — trust me. For those of you not keeping score at home this is the fifth installment of the Preacher series by Garth Ennis. I’m reviewing them one at a time, which means there are four previous reviews. There’s a plot summary below and I apologize for any repeat material. I will say this — overall Preacher is the best graphic novel I’ve read so far. It’s a long and far-reaching storyline that demands a great deal of time, but is compelling enough to be easily remembered.

The story so far: A Texas preacher named Jesse is infused with Genesis, a being so powerful that it could rival God. He embarks on a journey to find God and hold him accountable for the state of the world. Along the way he is reunited with his long-lost love Tulip and a vampire pal Cassidy. A man named Star, who is now the leader of a super-secret organization called The Grail, is hunting Jesse to use him as a new messiah. The Grail’s primary goal, up till volume three in the series, was to keep and maintain the offspring of Jesus Christ through repeated inbreeding. Also in play with no clear direction are: The Saint of Killers, God who is walking the Earth, various angels, and one demon who is the mother of Genesis.
 
This volume explores Cassidy’s back-story. Additionally, Cassidy attempts to betray Jesse by trying to sleep with Tulip. Tulip tells him off. Cassidy persists and Tulip gives him the same response. This all happens in New Orleans where an old friend of Cassidy’s, who is also a Voodoo priest, is going to help Jesse access Genesis, which is buried in his unconcious mind. In essence this volume is a character drama. Ennis is ramping us up for an inevitable conflict between Jesse and Cassidy over Tulip. In the end I’d imagine Jesse is going tie Cassidy down and let the sun handle the dirty work.
 
Jesse goes into a Voodoo trance and learns how to come to terms with Genesis. This all takes place in Jesse’s mind, which is also a movie theater. I think most guys’ minds are probably movie theaters. John Wayne, who was introduced in earlier volumes as Jesse’s unconcious mind and moral compass, hosts the entire ordeal. And the answer is Jesse must give himself to Genesis, just as Genesis has given itself to Jesse.
 
Damn this series is getting complicated. The funny thing is Ennis displays it in such a way that it never feels too crazy. All the pieces are expressed in easily digestable chunks (I generally read a whole volume of Preacher in 2 or 3 sittings, or roughly 100 pages at a time). What keeps it interesting is the amazing construction.
 
Ennis, presumably by design, lays out the themes he wants to cover in the first two volumes. But he lays the themes in a micro-view. They are easy-to-answer questions unless you’re a complete sociopath. For example, should Jesse kill the men who beat him as a child? Yes. Should Jesse take revenge on his derranged grandmother? Yes. Should agents of Heaven release the Saint of Killers to protect existence? Yes.
 
Three volumes later those same questions are starting to enter a little gray zone. And that shift is changing the course of the overall story. The original quest was: Jesse wanting to hold God accountable for the state of the world, and he can do that because he is fused with Genesis. Now the question is shifting towards: what is God and how in control or accountable is he (at least in the world of Garth Ennis)?
 
So far this story is as complex and interesting as Watchmen. However, it is more drawn out and the deeper levels are less obvious. Most Watchmen readers I’ve met are taking a walk on the preverbial wild side by reading a graphic novel — they’re weekend warriors. Preacher is a commitment to both the medium and idea that a comic book can transend into art.
 
I’m already a full-blown nerd and plan to stick it out, with only volumes 6, 7, 8, and 9 to go.
 
 
Just Fantastic appears on the second and fourth Wednesdays of every month.

Into every series a little rain must fall. And this one is a Tsunami of shit that splatters itself all over the awesome Preacher series. Now the good news is that you don’t need to read it. The volume addresses various back stories, which intrigued my curiosity until it made me want to tear the copy in half and flush it down the toilet one sheet at a time. Honestly, skip this volume.

Ennis gives us three stories in this volume. Each is independent of itself and the storyline of other Preacher volumes. It’s essentially random exposition that didn’t fit anywhere else. It also sucks — hard. The characters are The Saint of Killers, Arseface, and the good ole’ boys (who died in volume 2).

Originally, I really wanted to read Saint of Killer’s story — a western-style romp about privation and death on the open plains of the old west. Wow, do I regret that decision. While the character isn’t ruined, Ennis doesn’t write a convincing Western. It feels more like a one-off idea done to capitalize on the already successful Preacher title. But at least I felt like he took it seriously.

The other two shorts feel almost like spoofs. One is for a character we haven’t met in the main plot arc, Arseface. And the other one is just horrible, the good old boys. When I say horrible, I mean unreadable. The two rednecks, who are minions of serious villianry in the main plot arc, are portrayed as heroes in an over-the-top action movie. While it’s clear Ennis wanted it to be over the top, the story just doesn’t work.

To make sure I’m on base I discussed this volume with a fellow Preacher fan who said: “It’s like you (Steve) said, unreadable crap in a great series and we should have skipped it.”

I still have high hopes for volumes five through nine.

Just Fantastic appears the second and fourth Wednesday of every month.

Summary: We learn about Cassidy’s back story, which revolves around an Irish-English conflict. We see John Custer’s (Jesse’s father) Vietnam experiences. Jesse meets Genesis’ father, an angel, which was being held by The Grail. We meet the AllFather (head of The Grail) and the current descended of Jesus. Jesse rescues Cassidy. God shows up again. The Saint of Killers shows up again. There is a huge blood bath. Starr is coping with his new desires, which is freakin’ hilarious.

This issue is somewhat dated. The Grail, a secret organization of emence power existing solely to protect the bloodline of Jesus Christ has been re-used several times, some before and some after this work was oringally published. I’m sure everyone remembers The DaVinci Code, (I’ll never forget reading that piece of shit book on a Saturday afternoon while working tech support). This incarnation is more interesting, in fact I haven’t seen a better present day version.

Inside The Grail there is a split caused by ideology. The conservative sect- they’ve forced the inbreeding of Christ’s descendents for 2,000 years and don’t intend to stop. The reformative sect best summarized by a quote from Starr “Son of God or son of man you can’t fuck your sister and expect any good to come of it” [sic]. The main players are the AllFather (conservative) and Starr (reform). They are bluntly at odds with each other, with the AllFather holding most of the cards and Starr sneaking around trying to end what he believes is corruption through Jesse. The plan isn’t entirely detailed but it amounts to using Jesse as the second coming of Jesus and hoping people change their ways. Jesse doesn’t know, he’s pissed at Starr and The Grail because they shot at Tulip and were holding Cassidy prisoner.

This is a representation of religion at its most bureaucratic and legalistic. It’s representative and Ennis makes a startlingly fresh move by avoiding real life specifics, which would make him appear to take sides. Instead he offers a choice: religion with money and power (AllFather) or religion with zeal and faith (Starr). It’s worth noting that Starr’s movement is shown to be more liberal due to his personal needs, such as whores. Ennis lets them duke it out; it started in volume two and has a sort of conclusion in volume 3. In the end both sides fail. Jesse shows up with power comparable to that of God, an odd sort of a Christ figure that came down on their sacred ground like a thief in the night. The Saint of Killers, whose sainthood is authenticated in volume 4, joins with Jesse under interesting conditions. God appears on the sacred ground, talks only to Cassidy, takes care of business, and leaves.

Ennis shows an interesting, if not refreshing, sub-textual perspective on religion: any organization is wrong by its limitations and God is indifferent. Real faith and power (Jesse) seek the face of God and do what is right at all times- with or without a church. It puts a different flavor on the story to see Jesse as a man of faith or a man of God in these terms. Considering what could have happened with the Divine presence—I won’t spoil it, but the world could have been a different place entirely if God had sided with the AllFather or Starr.

Compounding the issue is God’s desire to not meet Jesse; his appearance to Tulip in volume 2 and Cassidy in volume 3. However, I’m only part way through volume 4, and without knowing the outcome of that meeting I can’t begin to comment or interpret the situation.

Marvel Zombies vs Army of Darkness is one of the great features of the comic book world: zany crossovers with no repercussions. The closest film has ever gotten is most likely Freddie vs. Jason, where two unrelated characters faced off just for shits and giggles. In all cases crossovers tend to foster an air of stupid but fun as explanations are rarely given and fan demand plots or actions generally occur.

For all intents and purposes a crossover is the ultimate fan-boy (or girl experience). In this one the Marvel Zombie universe, which now has five or more titles attributed to it, takes on Ash from the Evil Dead series. VERY COOL! I wish I could tell you that there were some deeper moments or deep mysteries of the universe were revealed but no. It’s just a highly enjoyable romp. If you like either or both source materials you’ll love this.

Just Fantastic appears the second and fourth Wednesday of every month.