Men of War #3

What the fuck is the sniper shooting at birds?

Third issue and third story to start off with two or three pages of the middle of the story while then reverting back to the beginning of the story to just tell it in a linear fashion from there.

Seriously. No, seriously. See how serious I am, starting a new paragraph and all that shit? Okay, okay, fuck you. Yeah, I start new paragraphs pretty fucking randomly sometimes. But this time. I'm serious.

Enough with the fucking pseudo starting in the middle bullshit when you're not really starting in the middle! This is not your fucking 'in media res', you got it? This is just bullshit. It doesn't draw me in. It just annoys me. Now if you'd continue the story from where you've started and the rest all falls in to place as the tale is told, that's 'in media res'. So just stop it. Every comic in this fucking company does it and just fucking stop it. Was this a demand handed down from Dan DiDio? I'm going to start knocking fucking heads if this keeps up!

How am I supposed to react?

"Oh man! They're really in the thick of things! Hmm, he's starting a music analogy. Okay, let's see where this goes."

"Hmm, well, he kind of loses the thread a bit here. Drops the music thing altogether. Weird. But they really seem to be in the shit here!"

"What? 'This would be the wrong place to die. This will be.' That's awkward and idiotic. Anyway, last clip! Let's see how they get out of this! Kind of curious as to what's happening but they have those narration thought boxes that should explain everything as they're pinned down in the thick of the fight!"

"Oh fuck me in my pee hole! We're gonna start the story now?! After wasting three pages just to make me realize where they're going to end up? What is that supposed to do? Elevate the tension? Or just waste three pages of my fucking $4.00!? Moronic."

Maybe I ate too much! Now I'm all cranky crazy spastic because my blood sugar is too high! Right now my rankings for the New 52 are pretty flexible and, well, bullshit. But these kinds of things are making me think I should create some kind of point system to help categorize how well written and entertaining each comic is. Does the Issue begin by changing events from last issue? Minus points! Does the issue begin with an excerpt from the middle only to tell the story from the beginning anyway? Big minus points! Or maybe that will just take more time than it's worth and I should just keep ranking the comics haphazardly!

When did Rock and his men become Navy Seals?

Holy fuck. I'm absolutely not surprised this comic was cancelled after reading this issue. I'm not quite done yet but I just read ten more pages. From page three where the soldier says, "Last clip," to the bottom of page 14 where the soldier once again says, "Last clip," catching the narrative back up to the beginning, the story makes absolutely no fucking sense. They might as well have just continued the story from page three with narrative boxes saying simply, "We were on a mission to blow up a battleship keeping food shipments from getting through. But things turned bugfuck and we had to find shelter as the whole town turned on us." There we go! Two sentences in a narration box to replace 11 pages of bullshit and confusion. Now what that means is we can spend 11 pages of the soldiers trapped and cornered. We could get some dialogue where we learn who all of these soldiers are. We can hear them being afraid. Oh, excuse me, they "don't know anymore how to be afraid."

These eleven pages are filled with narration boxes that describe the panels. It's like commentary from local news anchormen when they roll tape. "Here you'll see this car heading down the street. Then watch this as it hits a patch of ice! You'll notice it loses control and spins into the barrier!" And what do Rock and his guys do when the mission goes tits up? They kill everyone in town! I guess it's an evil town of evils since the people just swarm Rock's group with weapons.

Really? I paid money for this bullshit? Fuck. I'm an idiot.

After the last clip and the Americans run out of ammunition in the middle of the firefight, all of the combatants stop firing. Just, you know, because. Why kill them when they're not shooting back even though they've been shooting at them the whole time? So everyone takes a break until some apparent leader steps up, sighs, speaks a foreign language and then has all of the enemy combatants raise their weapons to, FINALLY, finish off Rock and his crew (at least I think it's Rock. He gets called Sarge twice and he has that scar that I'm pretty sure identifies him as Joe Rock (not to be confused with his totally kick-ass grandfather Frank)). And just before they all get killed, this happens:

Is he a Firestorm?!

And then the main story is over. And I'm not holding up too much hope for the back-up story to have an incredible finish.

Yeah, it was pretty lousy. "That family was just as scared of us as they were of the bad guys!" "Yeah, but we're the good guys and we saved them!" "Yeah! Go America!" "Anyway, best not to think too much!" The end.

Minus the pregnant lady, I've been in this situation hundreds of times in Call of Duty! Stupid rocket guys!

This issue of Men of War had a really, really horrible main story. And the back-up was as bad as it's always been. The comic told almost no story. "Rock and his team fuck up a mission and almost die. Private Korba explodes." This issue is causing Men of War to drop three full ranks! Good job, creative team!