They say that cat Shaft's a bad mother-SHUT YOUR MOUTH! I'm just talking bout Youngblood

My favourite used bookstore in the Annex just added a third floor of graphic novels, so I went to check it out. They have some awesome stuff (and a great selection of used piano books) but my favourite part was a selection of five random comic books for a buck. I picked one of the packs solely because it contained Youngblood issue 1 (or as it says on the cover, “1ST EXCITING ISSUE”). It was released in 1992. The cover alone is magnificent.










































I don’t really know many of the names. Bedrock, the huge dude in the back, is like as wide across as I am tall. I don’t know what those are on his shoulders. Old Man on the left there has mutton chops to rival the venerable Isaac Asimov’s. I do not for the life of me understand the Phantom of the Opera mask the dude on the right is sporting. What is its purpose? How is it staying on? The ginger’s thighs are ENORMOUS. And then his legs get super thin and then his shins look like someone stuffed a basketball down his pants. It’s amazing.

Inside they have a helpful guide to the names. The big guy is Bedrock, presumably because he’s made of rock. The old guy is Combat, because he engages in combat. The black guy is Chapel because…um…I got nothing. The token girl is Vogue, because she reads Vogue? The Deadpool-ish robot guy is called Diehard, because he likes Bruce Willis. The ginger is called Shaft, because he is obviously a black detective.

Each comic has a little character card. Mine is Vogue. She is apparently a Russian defector who is trained in gymnastics and martial arts. She likes to use throwing knives and shurikens. Yes, shurikens are obviously Russian, why do you ask? In her civilian identity, she runs a cosmetics empire. You can tell she is a cosmetics expert because of her face paint, obvi.

The first page contracts a tragic case of the Mark Trail disease of misplaced word balloons. Shaft (aka Jeff) is out with his girlfriend. Here’s the dialogue on the first panel according to where the word balloons are:

A tile on the floor: I’m actually shopping on my lunch hour with my boyfriend. Unbelievable!
The railing of a bridge: Believe it, Shelly. I told the guys back at the office that paperwork would wait.

Then in the next panel, Jeff appears to be having a conversation with himself while his girlfriend looks on, bemused. Shelly shoehorns into the conversation that she is an assistant DA. Presumably Jeff is some sort of detective.

A purse snatcher runs through the mall and Jeff leaps over…something, with a rainbow background. I wish I had the scanning technology so you could see this panel, but it’s magnificent. His right leg looks like it’s broken. His left leg looks like it was lopped off below the knee and the (now kidney bean shaped) foot was reattached to the knee. He leaps down some stairs and tackles the purse snatcher, who is now about two feet tall.

A man with a gun is on the balcony, aiming his gun that looks nothing like any gun I’ve ever seen at Shaft. He notices the sniper and throws a pen backwards (or something, the contradicting motion lines make this hard to figure out). The rainbow background is back. The pen hits the sniper in the throat and somehow knocks him backwards off the balcony, even though he was facing the railing. So I guess he was shooting at a spider behind him, or something.

Everyone wants to talk to Shaft, despite the fact that he just killed a man. It appears he breaks out in some kind of ballet dance move. He is hounded by journalists (of course, because journalists are always EVIL BAD VULTURES HURRRRR) and Shaft goes, “The press? The body isn’t even cold!” Yeah, when you just killed the dude, you don’t get the right to judge others.
Shaft has some pretty intense cheekbones. Like it looks like someone slashed his face. Shaft breaks out some dance moves again because someone is calling him on the Youngblood communicator.

I would never have noticed this if I didn’t read it on a website somewhere, but Rob Liefeld really, really hates feet. They are always either blocked from view or very tiny.

Now we switch to Bedrock, who is eating what looks like that weird green potion thing from Troll 2. Diehard telepathically (or something) figures out they need him and flies off. Chapel is in bed with a girl, and the whole sequence is very confusing, but it’s explained well here.

Shaft asks what’s going on and Anonymous Mission Control Girl informs them that their transport vehicles are under attack and yells by who: “IT’S STRONGARM AND GAGE!!! THE FOUR!” You know it’s serious because everyone has their teeth clenched SO HARD.

I got all excited because I thought Juggernaut was attacking Youngblood, except he’s not. Sad. His thigh is wider than his waist. Has Liefeld even seen a human being? I understand the urge to make your men manly; it’s a comic book, go for it. But at least make them proportionate. I promise, it’s possible. Off the top of my head, Ed McGuinness and Jim Lee can both manage it.
Two generic villains show up. One has a long ponytail that is waving around like Medusa’s snakes. I can’t even describe the girls villain’s outfit but here are some phrases for you: canary yellow, shoulder pads, and thunder thighs.

Anyway, Diehard attacks Juggernaut-lite and I can’t really describe what he’s doing. He leaps from above and kind of twists himself into a U. His legs are bent back way farther than they should be. In the next panel, his leg appears to be approximately two miles long. The next page features a very unappealing splash of Youngblood and some dudes with fat thighs in the back.

There’s another half to this book, but I can’t face it right now. True story: when I went to write “this” just now I accidentally wrote “shi” and then stopped. Freudian slip, I guess.

Urgh LOOK AT ME CLENCH

Rob, Rob, Rob...why?

Look at how HARD Conner is flexing! He's clenching every single muscle in his body to it's maximum extent. His neck in particular creeps me out A LOT. It's just all sinew and UGH. And he's sporting the signature Liefeld teeth clench. You might remember that from when he drew Captain America in Deadpool and I featured it. This is an issue with lots of different artists and I knew Liefeld was one of them and I thought one page might be Liefeld's and then I saw this and was like, "nope, this is definitely Liefeld." It makes me sad that there are only three artists I can recognize immediately: Udon, Jim Lee, and Rob Liefeld.

Here's the rest of the page:
















Batman's mouth is contorted weirdly. Speaking of contortion, HOLY CRAP FINGERS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY. There is no way Tim's fingers can fan out like that. I just tried, it's impossible. And he's not the circus performer, why are his legs doing that? I would expect that from Dick (he's a showoff) but not from Tim.

Also, what do you mean where's the rest of Wonder Woman? I thought that's all we need to see.

Now because you probably need it...
















BASK IN GUY GARDNER'S AWESOMENESS.

And in Rafael Albuquerque's art. He's one of my favourites.

The Day of the Ponytail

I think we can all agree that ponytails are generally the domain of the female. I very rarely see men with ponytails, and if they do have ponytails, they're low on their heads. But in comics, the rules are different.

















Did Canary do his hair or something? That's the only way I imagine a man would actually do his hair like this. This is an immaculate ponytail with no hair sticking out, and it's pulled back super tightly from his head. Not only is he wearing a ponytail, but he's wearing a ponytail he put effort into. You need gel or something to get it that perfect. He put thought into his hairdo.


















Oh hey Canary, you look really manly all of a...wait. That's just another man with blow dried anime hair in a ponytail. This guy is hilarious. He's supposed to be really scary and psycho, but all I could think when I was reading this was "I CANNOT TAKE THIS GUY SERIOUSLY WITH HIS LONG, FLOWING LOCKS."















If I'm recalling correctly (which I might not be) this guy is in some sort of secret service or some such. Wearing your hair in a ponytail is not the way to go about inspiring fear in people.

Comic books are not the only form of media susceptible to this phenomenon. Animation is as well.

















Let's ignore the fact that this guy might be wearing chaps. His hair here looks like those cartoon pictures of little girls who have a little ponytail sticking up because they're supposed to be cute. Or like, little lapdogs who have the ponytail to show that they're pampered. This is not the thing to wear if you want to be thought of as masculine, ever.















Wow. Not only is he wearing like, some sort of retro sixties ponytail, he is accessorizing with a headband that matches the rest of his outfit. Comics are insane.

I love you, Deadpool. Keep doing what you're doing.

Like I said before, I was going to stay away from cheap shots on Rob Liefeld, but I feel like this needs to be seen:








































It's like every bad hair sin of comics personified. High ponytail, check. Unnecessary additions to the hairdo, check. Mullet, check. In the words of the guys at Progressive Boink, "Can you imagine how hard you would elbow your friend if you saw a dude with three ponytails? You would elbow the shit out of them."

Friggin' Sweet

Historically, girls get the short end of the stick in comics. There's the costumes, which I covered before. Then there's the whole "women in refrigerators" thing. Then there's the fact that they never do anything cool, ever. But every so often, you find some really cool women in comics.


















Look at this woman from Birds of Prey whose name I can't remember right now. This is one of the most awesome panels I've seen in my life. She's wearing this Stormtrooper-esque armour with a BIG ASS GUN. After their train was detoured to some place that might be Hell, she is one of the only people to stay calm and do what needs to be done. She's all, "take cover, gentlemen. This is THE big gun." Love her.















I like the fact that after becoming a cripple, the artists resisted making Barbara into an ugly shell of her former self. It must be hard writing a crippled character who is hardly seen outside that one room, but the former Batgirl has an actual personality and does actual stuff (like swimming, working out, and going on dates with a surprisingly buff Dick Grayson). You can't deny it: Oracle's pretty badass. She took out a bunch of dudes single-handedly while in a wheelchair, and she's probably the best hacker in the DCU. And look how pretty she is here! Love it.

















HOLY GOD THERE IS A FEMALE DEADPOOL AND SHE IS WAY MORE AWESOME THAN I WOULD HAVE EXPECTED LIEFELD CAPABLE OF DRAWING! Look how amazing she is! She's so funny. Her boobs look a little wonked up, but I will ignore that because she is hilarious. I need more of her, STAT.
















I really loved Dom's design in Cable and Deadpool. Putting aside the fact that spot on her eye makes her resemble Petey from Our Gang, I loved her haircut and her badass black outfit. She also got a lot more character development than the other side characters of Cable/Deadpool when she had various moral dilemmas. She's pretty awesome.














Blind Al is possibly my favourite female character EVER. She has crazy ass hair and awesome wardrobe, and is one of the only people who can match wits with Deadpool. She's a cantankerous old lady who is forced to live with Deadpool and actually got him to APOLOGIZE to her. That's pretty difficult when the person you're dealing with has no conscience.

I also deeply, deeply appreciate the fact that they make t-shirts specifically for blind people.

Tarzan, Cap, the future, and a dude with a large head

There's cheesecake, and then there's cheesecake...
















And then there's Johnny Weismuller here. Wow. Those are some...defined abs.















Look, I wanted to stay away from cheap shots on Rob Liefeld. According to fans who have met him at Comic Con, he's a really nice guy and he's so in love with comics, and it would feel like kicking a puppy to me.

BUT HE MAKES IT SO EASY. Look at that: all these pictures of Cap were taken from a section of an issue of Deadpool: Merc With a Mouth that he drew. I think there were about three pictures of him in which his teeth were NOT firmly clenched together. He better be careful: if he doesn't stop grinding his teeth he could end up with gum recession and no one wants that.















Meanwhile, over in Agent X, we get to see what Emma Frost will look like in about twenty years.















All these pictures come from comics I have saved on my computer, but I can't even begin to guess who this guy is or which comic he's from. I'm thinking it looks kind of like Deadpool art, but I have no memory of Deadpool fighting a dude with a huge head who appears to be wearing a green toga. I have this saved as "brainchildmaybe" because I thought he looked kind of like Brainchild, but then I looked at an actual picture of Brainchild and the only thing they have in common is the huge head. Anyway, I enjoy this a lot because anytime there is an extremely angry looking man with a huge head shooting lasers that go "BRAZZAP", I am on board. I think the fact that it is out of context and surrounded in mystery just adds to my level of enjoyment.