There are a lot of bad comic books published on a weekly basis, and there are reviewers who rip them to shreds both online and in print. Rarely, however, is it done with the style and panache as Paul O’Brien’s recent virtual shredding of Jeph Loeb’s first arc on Wolverine. I haven’t actually read the book, to be honest, but I can see where O’Brien’s coming form with his rant. Loeb is a frustratingly uneven author, capable of writing great stories like The Long Halloween and most of his Superman/Batman run, but also just as likely to churn out pablum like his and Liefeld’s Captain America/Fighting American.

I’ve cherry picked two of my favorite bits from the review below.

This is trivia. These are points of detail, of interest only to the sort of nitpicker who knows the difference between a cat and a sasquatch. This is America, goddamit, and if our children leave school knowing what a cat is, they’ve been reading too many books and playing too little football. What are you, some sort of difference-between-a-cat-and-a-sasquatch-knowing nancy boy? Such considerations are beneath Jeph Loeb, for he is thinking of the bigger picture. To the true maestro, the cat and the sasquatch are as one.

This next paragraph might be my favorite chunk of the review. Proclaiming Chuck Austin’s “Draco” storyline to be superior to anything else ever written is like kicking a guy in the junk after he’s crotched himself on a fence.

It’s not even an original concept. Chuck Austen did exactly the same idea with his Maximus Lobo character in “Dominant Species” a few years ago. And “Dominant Species” was considerably better. At least the imagery made some sort of internal sense, even if the underlying theme was absurd. At least the plot had a halfway sensible structure. This - and I can hardly believe I’m writing such a thing - isn’t even in Chuck Austen’s league. He wrote some godawful stories during his time on the X-Men, stories where the central premise was irredeemable and the plot was riddled with holes. But at least they had the basic shape of a story. “Evolution” doesn’t even have that. “The Draco” was better than this.

I have no idea if O’Brien harbors any desire to write comics professionally, nor whether he has the creativity to do so. He knows as well as anyone that just because someone’s a successful and talented writer in one field, it doesn’t mean they can swing it in the comic book industry. One thing’s for certain, though: I’d buy a book about comics written by the man in a second.

Comics