Introducing The HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS Meal Kit
When I launched this newsletter, about a month ago, my objective was to run the best newsletter about recent releases in single-issue corporate American comics of all time. You’ve been a wonderful audience to write for, and thanks to you, we’re slowly but surely getting there. In the wake of that unmitigated success, I am beyond thrilled to announce that what we’re now dubbing “Phase One” is continuing apace, and that we’re more than ready to take our next step on the path to newsletter greatness. Today, we’re introducing you to a brand new partner. Thanks to them, later this year, you will be able to purchase a one-of-a-kind dining experience like no other. It’s a meal kit, inspired by the universe of HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS. And while we can’t announce a date or pricing just yet, we can give you a mouth-watering preview of what you’ll be in for, in the very near future.
COLD PIZZA
Inspired by the opening splash in Heroes in Crisis #5, this cold slice of pepperoni pizza will make you feel nostalgia for a past when this was a hot slice of pepperoni pizza. To be clear: we’re not associating Heroes in Crisis, a good comic, with cold pizza. The Heroes in Crisis of pizza would be hot pizza. Very good pizza. No, this pizza is about comics that TRIED to do Heroes in Crisis without saying as much, out of sheer cowardice, and kinda failed at it. Don’t go into this pizza expecting the pitch-perfect body language of tics and micro-expressions that Clay Mann delivered in Heroes in Crisis. This item is more like three pages straight of Mark Bagley talking heads.
A CHIPOTLE BURRITO WITH MILD SALSA
Experience the very mild heat of a take like “maybe the Punisher comics… are bad?” with the official HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS Chipotle order: a chicken burrito, white rice, black beans, mild salsa, cream AND cheese. It’s not really that spicy, but if you’re very uncultured, it will feel really spicy. And if you’re not afraid of having something incredibly divisive that maybe feels out of place all up in there, it will have too much cilantro. It’s served too hot to the touch, to give you the opportunity to read a comic while it cools down.
TWO RED BULLS
Stay awake, worked up, and ready to start fights with ANYONE with the irresponsible drink combo that has fueled most if not all of the HYBC writing process. It’s two Red Bulls. The first can of Red Bull is there to put you in the mindset that Red Bull is a good energy drink that helps you stay energized. The second Red Bull leverages that psychosomatic effect and persuades your shitty body that it’s cool and good to stay up all night, finish the work early, watch AEW Dynamite and crash hard at 6AM local time. Will you be proud of the work? Not exactly. Will people call you “a wacko”? Oh you KNOW they will. Will you feel bad about it for several weeks? HELL YEAH. TWO RED BULLS, YOU MOTHERFUCKS.
A HANDFUL OF LOOSE HARIBO CANDY
Treat yourself and put EVEN MORE SUGAR in your system, fuck it. Life’s too short. It’s a whole handful of Haribo candy, for you, right now. What, you think you’re too good for it? You wanna go and throw away the shitty gummies? You wanna fight? You wanna pretend that John Byrne is good in THIS house? Yeah, thought so. Put the gummy slop in your face.
TWO BEAR CLAWS
The Bear Claw is a pretty good premise for a baked good, right? In HYBC tradition, this meal kit takes it too far, by giving you two of them. Also, they’re the french kind of bear claw, so the filling is gonna be vanilla pastry cream. It’s delicious. It’s self-indulgent. There’s two of them. It’s as good as it gets, especially when times don’t give you much to work with, or think about.
HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS: SHARE YOUR PICS WITH THE HASHTAG #HYBCMEAL
The facts, as I understand them, go like this: Amanda Conner is probably the most gifted cartoonist working in comics today. Her 2014 run on Harley Quinn, done alongside Jimmy Palmiotti and a host of talented jokesters that includes Chard Hardin and John Timms, has been instrumental in defining Harley Quinn as a character in our current moment, leading to a TV show that I have not watched because there’s no good, straightforward way to watch it in France, and an all-time faceblast powerhouse live-action film. (To be clear, I’m talking about Cathy Yan’s BIRDS OF PREY, OR: THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN) It would follow, then, that a four-issue Black Label miniseries starring the characters from that movie, and illustrated beginning-to-end by Amanda Conner, as a follow-up to that 2014 Harley Quinn run, would be a total slam dunk, right? Well, I’ve read Harley Quinn & The Birds of Prey #4, and the answer is: I don’t think so.
And let’s be honest: some of that is probably on me! I’ve always felt that the 2014 Harley Quinn run was corny as hell, because the character work was too shallow, and the jokes were not funny enough. I never cared for it, I’ve said as much before, and I’ll say it again, forever. But all this time, I thought it was because the constraints of making and releasing a monthly main line superhero book were holding the creative team back. They wanted to do a raunchy comedy full of sex and violence, but they couldn’t deliver on the sex and violence, so we had to settle for the limp innuendo.
Well, here we are, one mature readers imprint and four issues later, and guess what? The limp innuendo is still there! Yes, the violence is marginally more bloody, and the once-implied ass cracks are showing up slightly less implied, but this is still very much the book I didn’t care for. It’s very pretty. It’s bouncy and it’s punchy and it’s cartoony, Amanda Conner is working at the peak of her goofy powers and delivering gags at a steady clip. Some of them even land! Other gags involve hackneyed jokes about the Penguin’s dick! It doesn’t work, and in the end, all it really has to show for it is a story about how it’s fun to have friends, and to have fun, with your friends. And if you think that’s disappointing, imagine how I feel.
Sometimes, however, you root for a book, and it ends up being one of the most rewarding reads you have all week. Take X-Factor #7. On paper, it’s just an issue in which Daken tails Siryn to figure out what’s wrong with her, comes too close to the truth, and gets in dangerous trouble for it, while the rest of the team goes around talking to the people that knew her. There’s a big reveal, a scary cliffhanger, and plenty of that tasty soap opera romance. It’s simple stuff, but David Baledon and Leah Williams use the setup and make it about something more through the radical power of empathy. And if that wasn’t challenging enough, it’s empathy for Daken, a character that, not ten years ago, I was more than happy to see drown face first in a shallow puddle.
Without going into the specifics of the plot, I will tell you that the book looks at Daken’s many tribulations and trials, from the mental to the far too physical, to examine questions of abuse and trauma, how they work and what they do to people. In short: it fucks you up! It makes you do bad things! It leaves scars! Yes, that’s simple stuff, but it’s beautifully expressed, and it keeps you in the feeling every step of the way, thanks to solid storytelling, including an inspired serpentine spread that illustrates someone being led into a bad place by leading your eye through bad places. It’s form serving content, it’s style serving substance. It’s great stuff and I’m beyond thrilled for what’s next.
You should buy Warhammer 40,000: Marneus Calgar #4 because Jacen Burrows is great at drawing violence and body horror, and the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium provides that in maximalist spades. That’s really the whole of the review. The rest is irrelevant. You don’t need to hear me praise Kieron Gillen for his inspired choice to zoom in on one of the most ludicrously fucked-up parts of 40k’s lore, delighting in each grisly detail with the playfulness of your most avid Codex reader. You don’t want me to spoil the inspired bits of future-shock satire, that feel drawn straight out of a time when Games Workshop were less self-conscious about ripping off 2000 A.D. wholesale. And I don’t want to tell you about all those things because YOU SHOULD BE INTO THAT BOOK ALREADY. Do you not like things that are cool? Does it make you feel uncomfortable when dudes in giant power armor perforate psycho demon-worshipping dirtbags with giant guns and even bigger prejudice? It’s good for you! Get it!
The Future State Roundup is NO MORE! It’s been a month, we’ve seen all but one #1, and we’re just about done entertaining the duds. So, it’s time to pull the switcheroo on all these clowns. Welcome to week one of the Future State Highlights. It’s like a roundup, but shorter.
Future State: Wonder Woman #2 is self-evidently a very pretty book, that’s what you pay Jordie Bellaire and Joelle Jones the big bucks for, so that’s what you get. But as a result, I’ve seen some people out there call it “shallow”, and that’s just plain wrong. It’s primal. The basic story at the core is about descending into Hell to save someone and having to deal with all the gods and mythical entities that dwell in the way, through courage and wit. Folks, that’s about as mythological as it gets. Which works, because, for one, it’s a Wonder Woman book so that sort of thing should be part and parcel; and, for two, it’s simple enough to get out of the way of everything else. You can lay out what Yara Flor is about as a character through her reactions to all that immortal nonsense AND you can get really stylish with it too, trusting that people will get it. That’s what being primal gets you.
You will call me a freak when I tell you I loved Future State: The Flash #2. But it’s the kind of pure, uncut melodramatic shit that, deep down, I’m all about. Yes, it does inflict EVEN MORE violence and misery to Barry Allen and Wally West, all of it as contrived as anything you’ve read in a Silver Age comic. It has unbearably long monologues where characters talk about their feelings, the meaning of their lives, and spell out their motivations out loud for all to see. And it doesn’t even resolve! It leaves everyone to a fate objectively worse than death, while a small box tells you that this is gonna fade into the background of Future State: Teen Titans! It’s exactly the kind of grandiloquent grimdark doomer bullshit that’s tuned to the frequency of my irony and anime-poisoned brain and no one else’s. You probably hated it. I loved every page. Welcome to hell.
But since I’m too good to leave you without an opinion we can all agree on, let’s have a quick word about Future State: Swamp Thing #2! How good was that? Very good. You liked it! I liked it! I was thrilled! I was dazzled! It was beautiful, it was bittersweet, and it made us all think. There, happy? It’s a great book and you’ve read it already. Why am I bothering?
Because I love you that’s why! Thank you for reading, and thank you even more for telling your friends about what we do here! Like, comment, subscribe, share, and I may just come back to you next week! Depending on what Marvel does about the heinous bullshit in Immortal Hulk #43, it might be a little different. Not sure about anything just now, we’re playing this one by ear. Until then, fuck Joe Bennett and his bullshit. Let’s go with standard procedure, and HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS.