Voodoo #1

According to the cover and the first page of Voodoo, this comic book is about a David Icke lizard woman stripper. And if you throw in the cover of Issue #2, she's also a menstruating federal agent!

She hasn't even started dancing and people are throwing five and ten dollar bills at her!

I guess I can believe guys are throwing more than dollar bills on stage. It's probably some fancy shmancy high end strip joint. But I don't believe this next panel.

There is no way this guy is fat enough to be a real strip club DJ.

This is DC's big comic aimed at women in their 52! It has a lot of really powerful images of a woman taking her clothes off while a DJ tells the men hypnotized by her that they want her and need to give her money. It's all done really classy! I think the definition of a classy woman is one that refuses to have sex with you in the men's restroom of the club where you just met her. The definition of a classy guy is one that acts like a douchebag and throws plenty of money around.

Two agents are sitting at the rail on the side of Voodoo's stage watching her strip. They guy is named Evans and the lady is named Fallon. Probably last names since Federal Agents only ever call each other by their last names. Fallon gets pissed off at Evans for enjoying keeping an eye on Voodoo while she dances. She should be pissed off that they're doing their job so poorly! Shouldn't they try to be inconspicuous? Bringing a female to the rail at a strip club is going to get you noticed by the dancer! They always ignore the men when a woman is ringside!

I think DC likes the long skinny panels so that they can show headless women with big boobs. They did this to Catwoman a lot in her own book!

Evans tries to get some information about Voodoo from the server. The server, like a big rookie chump, blabs that Voodoo has only been working the club for a few months, the guys at the military base love her, and that her real name is Priscilla. Someone fire that server immediately!

Oh, because the other names like Dominique, Krystal, Pandora, and Lilliputian are the real names of the less popular dancers.

Meanwhile, it's taken Fallon a full song to make her way out of the club. As she's leaving, she bumps into some young white boy in a hoodie, an attitude, and a bitterly disappointing childhood. Just because Fallon brushed by him, he thinks he needs to go intimidate her with his gang of underage oafs.

I sense a really painful disrespecting coming up in a few panels!

Whenever someone complains that they're being disrespected, it usually means they've been acting like an asshole and somebody else finally called them on it. And now the asshole has a legitimate reason (in his own dull head) to act out violently on the other person. People who think they deserve respect are assholes. ASSHOLES!

Disrespectality!

I'm glad all of the pictures I want to scan of Fallon outside the strip club are on the edges of my Big Book of #1s! Because when I check Google for pictures from the Voodoo comic book, they're all pictures of Voodoo stripping! Way to go, internet nerds!

Next we get a couple of scenes of eight strippers in the back room talking. And let's assume there's a stripper out on each stage right now. That's a lot of variety! The Voodoo Lounge really is a high end establishment! It's like the Metropolitan Opera of getting naked!

Seriously? No career strippers? No women living out their dreams? Poets? National Merit Scholars? That can't be right!

Here in Portland, we have a strip club called The Pitiful Princess. I wonder if the most popular dancer in that club gets the sobriquet Pitiful Princess!

Voodoo's name is Pris. So, obligatory reference to Blade Runner here.

Pris is either a Raccoon or a zombie from Zombie Nation.

Evans decides he wants a private dance from Voodoo. They go to a private room where she dances around in her underwear for a few pages. Evans questions her about her life which is always a bad idea! You don't want to know any real personal information from the naked woman you're paying to grind on you! But it doesn't matter because Evans ends up spilling all of his seeds. I mean beans.

He probably only told her all of this because she has limited telepathic abilities as well. Allegedly.

Evans also threatens to stick her with vivisection. Voodoo doesn't take too kindly to that and flips the fuck out.

Whoops!

After she kills Evans, she takes his phone, Federal Badge, and skin. She quits the club and walks off looking like Federal Agent Evans.

Grifter #4

At some point in this comic, I hope somebody says, "Did you hear? Green Arrow and Grifter killed themselves in a repressed homosexual suicide pact!"

I don't know who decided it would be interesting to have Grifter and Green Arrow meet up. Perhaps it's needed for a plot point. Maybe Green Arrow will end up sponsoring Grifter in his war against the Daemonites. Or perhaps it was an editorial decision. "Hey, Edmondson! Green Arrow fucking sucks and we need him to appear in your comic this month to punch up his numbers with a perceived cross-over!" Or maybe it was more like this: "Hey, Edmondson! Grifter fucking sucks and we need Green Arrow to appear in your comic to make Grifter look interesting by comparison!" I wonder why Captain Atom isn't guest starring?

The editors should have canned the whole guest star thing and been on Edmondson's back about his writing. "Hey, Edmondson! Stop making Grifter explain all of his actions through narration and just let the story evolve organically!"

I've been ignoring these stupid narration boxes for quite awhile now but they're impossible to ignore in Grifter. If he's running for the door, he thinks, "Sometimes it's better to make a move out the door than to stand firm and fight it out." Or if he stays to fight, he thinks, "I decided to stay and fight!" Or if he thinks someone might be an alien, he thinks, "I get the feeling that guy isn't all he's cracked up to be. You should trust your feelings. Feelings are the hearts way of saying something smarter than your brain can say it!" Fuck! Why am I wasting these gems here?! I should be writing my own script and sending it to DC!

"Hey, Clark! You think Grifter's arms could have more veins?

That was the editors being sarcastic in the last caption and the artist, Scott Clark, believing they were serious.

The next page is just a fucking insult to comic book readers. Do you think we'll put up with anything?! Just change fucking reality from panel to panel and will slobber and drool all over the comic in fanboi excitement? Ignoring any inconsistencies for the honor of giving DC $3 to read their stupid funny books? Fuck you, DC! And you too, Nathan Edmondson! I'm going to call Nathan the worst word in the world right now, so you might want want to cover your eyes: HACK!

Here's the page that pisses in the face of everyone who paid money for this comic.

How did you just do that? Dissolve the tape holding the gun to your hand so you could drop your gun to catch the arrow? Fuck you all!

Edmondson didn't even try to wait one month between the taped hand and the hand catching the arrow. That's the kind of cliffhanger trick you use at the end of an issue and hope nobody remembers about the tape after one month. But to pull that shit across one page? Amateur! From this day forward, you, Nathan Edmondson, are my mortal enemy.

Oh fuck me! Yeah, that's a new fuck me! I was fucking exaggerating when I wrote his narration panels earlier!

Wow, I sure am saying "fuck" a lot! That shows I'm in a pure rage! I wonder if I send a letter to DC, I can get my money back for this issue. And I don't mean an email! An actual letter. Fuck, that's a good idea.

Grifter runs from Q-Core Headquarters right through the cover of a 1970s text book.

If it were an actual 1970s text book, the woman would be Asian.

The chase scene, well, the chase scene is...*sniff* It's so hard to type through the tears. The chase scene is just excruciating. Can 5 1/2 pages of comic be excruciating? Am I dulling the meaning of the word? Maybe. But perhaps I'll put everyone else through it as well. But not by scanning the pages in (well, maybe a few panels). But by describing the action! Maybe it'll sound better in a play by play! I'll begin with the panel just after Grifter pushes his way through the crowd (three's a crowd, amirite?!)

Panel 1: Green Arrow has left the lobby of Q-Core in downtown Seattle and is suddenly standing on the back of a semi-truck's trailer. The fantasy isn't that he suddenly hopped up on the back of this semi that just happened to be passing by so he could have a clear view of Grifter. The fantasy is a semi-truck being on the streets of downtown Seattle! A delivery truck I could believe. But an eighteen wheeler? Forget it!

Panel 2: Grifter runs into the Pink Elephant Car Wash while Green Arrow stands on his semi watching.

The panel only shows the bottom half of the sign. So I thought I'd show it in all its neon glory.

Panel 3: Grifter comes shooting out of the car wash in a stolen car with a spray of mist coming off the front of his car. Or he's driving through a poltergeist.

Panel 4: A close up of Panel 3 so the stupid idiotic reader can see that Grifter is behind the wheel. That's the creative team insulting the reader, not me! I'm being insulted here as well!

Panel 5: Green Arrow continues to aim at Grifter. I guess he's still on the back of the truck.

Panel 6: Grifter is undoing his belt and/or scratching his crotch yelling, "Dammit, dammit, dammit!"

Panel 7: Grifter is tying his belt to the steering wheel. He says, to nobody, "Two things I've always hated..."

Panel 8: Grifter shoots out the windshield.

Panel 9: Grifter turns on the cruise control. He says, "...one is traffic...I HATE traffic..." Wow! Italics and bold! He REALLY hates traffic!

Panel 10: Grifter has clambered out of the windshield to lie on his stomach on the hood of the car. Facing backwards.

Panel 11: Grifter getting up to a kneeling position. He says, "...the other..."

Panel 12: Grifter kneeling and shooting backwards while keeping the car straight with the belt. I can't say he's steering since he has no idea where he's going. He says, "...is tailgaters."I don't know. Is this a joke? Is he mad at Green Arrow chasing after him on foot? That's tailgating? Here's an idea! Don't get all fancy just to show your stupid belt trick idea! Just drive the fuck away really fast! Save the belt thing for a real car chase!

Panel 13: Green Arrow jumping off of the roof of a car. I don't know where his truck went. I guess he's been chasing after Grifter off-panel, going from car roof to car roof. You know, tailgating. Green Arrow shoots an arrow and misses. He says, "Okay, let's see if we can get a look at him now, Naomi." Naomi is that woman who sits in the Green Arrow Help Desk making fun of him as he tries to fight crime. She's running a camera on his bow so they can see who Grifter is.

Panel 14: Green Arrow on the roof of a yellow car, kneeling, while he nocks an arrow. He says, "So..." Also, he's not being shot. Grifter sucks! Non-moving target directly behind you, moron! Shoot him! Technically Green Arrow is moving forward. But he's right behind Grifter! Take some shots!

Panel 15: Green Arrow aiming. He says, "...who's behind the mask?"

Panel 16: Green Arrow's arrow takes off Grifter's mask.

Panel 17: Grifter kills himself by diving in front of his cruise control moving car so that he can recover his mask.

Okay, he doesn't die. Or hurt himself. Or dodge the car. The car just stops existing after this, okay? Like the tape!

Panel 18: Grifter puts his mask back on, shoots at Green Arrow, and says, "Gotcha!" Even though he doesn't.

Panel 19: Grifter falls on his ass. Why? I don't know. His reflexes finally failed him. There is a THUNK sound effect that maybe implies an arrow hit somewhere? And Grifter is yelling, "AAARGH!" But I think he just fell after diving for his mask and turning to shoot Green Arrow. He ran out of action points.

Panel 20: Grifter on the ground. Green Arrow's foot. Green Arrow says, "You missed." Grifter says, "So did you."

Panel 21: Green Arrow pointing a loaded bow at Grifter. Grifter pointing a possibly loaded gun at Green Arrow. Green Arrow says, "What's your business with Q-Core?" Grifter says, "What's yours?" Green Arrow says, "Right now, keeping innocent people out of your line of fire." Well, that's debatable.

Panel 22: Grifter says, "I'm not after anyone innocent, Archer. Just trying to clear my name and find out what Q-Core wants with me."

That's basically the end of the chase scene. It's not the end of the pain though. Grifter explains the aliens. Green Arrow, who has fought plenty of aliens himself and been resurrected as well, tells Grifter, "You're insane. Or you fake it well." Hey! Hey! Check out how well I can fake being insane!

"Aliens are after me!"

Did you buy it? Green Arrow would have. Anyway, just as Green Arrow is about to take Grifter into custody, the cops show up to try and take the credit. They surround him and Green Arrow disappears somewhere else because reality only counts panel to panel in this comic book.

I'm done scanning things out of this issue. I just can't take it anymore. But here's the narration panels for the next page.

Grifter: Regardless of how good you are, you sometimes get surprised.
Grifter: When you operate in the dark, sometimes the dark wins out.
Grifter: But sometimes there's a bit of sunlight left.
Grifter: And sometimes surprises come in twos.

Oh, shut up.

Tear gas lands around the policemen's feet. That's the second surprise! A woman on a bike rides up and tells Grifter to get on. Then they drive off, jumping off the front of the obligatory police car hood as the woman whacks a police man with a stick and yells, "Besa mi culo!" Nice. That cop was just trying to do his job, asshole!

I lied. Here's a panel that only speaks the truth. If a woman asks you to buy her a drink, she merely wants to be held.

That woman apparently works for Q Core. She'll probably be able to answer some of Grifter's questions next issue. Lucky him. Green Arrow wants Naomi to search for the term, Demon Knight, because Grifter told him about the Daemonites. Ha ha! All Green Arrow is going to learn about is that Paul Cornell is a better writer than J.T. Krul!

Oh yeah, and Gretchen is still trapped in Hell (just outside of Gotham) with some Daemonites of her own.

Grifter #3

I'm going to tell the story of this comic in just scanned in panels with comments! It'll be like the Director's Cut of Blade Runner but with comments! Like the DVD Director's Cut of Blade Runner with Ridley Scott's Commentary Track! Try and follow along!

Of course! DUH!

The Fugitive.

Wait! When the fuck did all that happen?!

Hee hee hee. Units.

What the fuck did I miss? Didn't he get that mask in the souvenir shop with the hat in Issue #1?

But girls don't have units!

Meanwhile, in Gotham City....

Not as tough as she thought she was!

I'm still boggling at the 'most wanted man in the universe' line. I mean, the majority of the universe probably hasn't even met him!

Now your turn to hide!

Open fire! The long haired, unarmed man is slapping the shit out of them!

"I LOVE YOU!"

"Who loaded this helicopter with Flour and Fire?!

Your brother was a helicopter?

My spine smells like corn chips.

Oh! So that explains the caption at the beginning of this comic. Nice timeline, Edmondson!

That guy's a replicant as well! I mean an alien!

Green Arrow is behind it! Go kick his ass, Grifter! You suck but if you kill him, I'll change my mind!

Well, it's either Gotham or Hell. Who can fucking tell the difference?

Grifter #2

Grifter meets up with his girlfriend Gretchen in a diner in Louisiana to try to convince her that he isn't crazy. Last issue, she really seemed like she was going to make him pay as she was headed toward the police station. I guess Nathan Edmondson, the writer, decided not to go that way. While he's speaking with Gretchen, a police officer walks in.

Grifter gets a feeling that this cop isn't a cop at all but one of the Daemonites. I wouldn't call that intuition at all. I would call that your new ability to identify the aliens even when they're wearing human skin. Just like Grifter can hear their thoughts all the time, now he can sense them in his presence. That isn't intuition. Or a gut feeling. Or a suspicion. That's the new alien DNA or blood or whatever in his body reacting to the presence of an alien with the same DNA. Or blood. Or whatever.

Intuition is such a fucking crock anyway! Intuition is usually just a stupid or imperceptive person reacting to but not consciously thinking about the evidence presented to them. Or it's just nonsense made up in the person's head. One of those so-called first impressions. And these are the hardest things to disprove once somebody gets it in their head that they've intuited something. Like when someone thinks someone is lying to them. They'll never be convinced without incontrovertible proof to the contrary because why would they think up something that was wrong? Especially any asshole who walks around telling other people that they have a great intuition. When I hear that, I have an intuition that that person is the dumbest fuck in the room.

Grifter picks a fight with the cop to prove to his girlfriend that the aliens actually exist. Here's the part where I say this story would have been better if Grifter really was insane and only believed he was hearing aliens. But I think I've kicked that dead horse in the teeth long enough. At one point in the fight, Grifter sets the cop on fire.

That's flour and fire.

This results in a huge explosion. Okay, not an explosion but a SSHOOOOM! He used barely a bag of flour which probably would have caused a flash fireball that lasted a second or two at best. But this?

Maybe if it were non-dairy creamer! I've seen Mythbusters too, Mr. Edmondson!

Oh but does it all work out? Of course not. The cop never transforms into some alien thing so his girlfriend just believes Cole Cash killed a cop. Which he did, I guess. But I think it was a Daemonite! But now not only his he Sawyer pulling con jobs, he's also become Kate running from the law with the people he loves claiming he's a killer!

Gretchen runs off. Cole steals a cop car. Gretchen steals some money and takes the last train to Gotham. Max shoots out the tire on Cole's car. Cole and Max have a shooting match with neither one willing to actually shoot the other one. And then Cole runs away into Issue #3.

Oh, also, the jerks at the Pentagon noticed a Daemonite gas beast leak out of the dead woman on the plane while looking at the plane's security camera. One of them mentions it looks like images from THE BLACK FILES! Whistle whistle whistle whistle whistle whoooo. WOOO WOOO whoo wooo WOO WOOOOO! Whistle whistle whistle whistle whistle whoooooooo. Whooo whoooooo. DUN!

Grifter #1

Grifter does that comic book thing where the writer starts in the middle of the story like writers are supposed to do. Except the writer doesn''t really follow through and after a few pages, heads back to the beginning with an "Previously" or a "15 Hours Earlier" tag. And then the writer tells the tale from the beginning after adding that little bit of a middle part. But that's not exactly much of an epic story and that's no way to start in the middle of the story. That's just giving the reader a glimpse of the middle of the story so that the story can begin in a comic book action scene.

I had a roommate named Grifter. I wrote a song about him. It goes like this.

This guy was traveling on a plane. This guy has them Wolverine sideburns. He also has a hat. Then he starts to hear voices. This makes him flip the hell out. It was a woman. She was probably a demon. He was now on a hell ride up in the sky. She began to attack him. She wanted to kill him. But he stabbed her in the face. Everybody was freaked the hell out.

Hell ride in the sky!
Hell ride in the sky!
Hell ride in the sky!
Hell ride in the sky!
Hell ride!

Everybody wanted him off the plane. They thought he was uncool. They did not know the woman was a demon. So my roommate pretended that some alcohol was a bomb. "I will blow this fucking plane up and fuck the pilot in the ass," he yelled. "I will do it!" he said to the freaked out people. Then he opened the door on the plane. Everyone was screaming their heads off. But the waiter on the plane was a demon too. He tried to kill my roommate. But they both fell out of the plane.

Hell ride in the sky!
Hell ride in the sky!
Hell ride in the sky!
Hell ride in the sky!
Hell ride!

Thank you very much. Be a Pepper. Drink Dr. Pepper.

After the opening action shot, time turns back on itself to before Grifter boarded the plane (I'm making an assumption that the guy with sideburns is Grifter since the Grifter on the cover has a handkerchief covering his face). He cons some guy out of some counterfeit money. I guess that proves he's Grifter? I think there should be more heroes (or villains. Which is this guy? An anti-hero?) with names that describe the crimes they commit. Then Batman would fight guys like The Murderer and The Bank Robber and The Blackmailer and The Forger and The Check Bouncer. And Green Arrow could kick the ass of The Jay Walker and The Litterer and The Guy Who Smokes Closer Than 20 Feet to the Entrance of the Convenience Store.

On his way to meet a lady at the airport, he gets dragged into an alley and kidnapped. He awakens 17 minutes later in the middle of some kind of alien mind transfer. The aliens didn't buckle him down very well and none of them hung around to watch the transfer and make sure it goes okay. So he just walks out of the warehouse where they stuck him. But on the way out, he runs into an alien that looks like a human. Grifter can now hear the aliens thoughts since the transfer must have been half completed. So now he has the power to recognize who is an alien disguised as a human. The plot seems a bit familiar. It just seems to be missing one thing.

Grifter escapes from the plane, kills the Alien flight attendant that jumped with him, and lands safely in the water. He then contacts Gretchen, the woman he was supposed to meet in San Juan on the other side of the plane flight. And that's when he finds out he's been gone for 17 days.

17 days and he didn't even know it. I can buy that. Except he had tickets to catch a flight the day he was kidnapped. And when he speaks with Gretchen, he mentions how he just barely made the flight. Really? They just decided since the time of the flight was close enough, fuck it, just let him on and don't question him about it! Bah! Who cares! I'd already decided that if this comic was fun and entertaining, I was going to hate it for absolutely no reason other than I need a new comic to despise. Green Arrow and Captain Atom were read so long ago! I crave the hatred!

Now Grifter is wanted! He was flying under the name Christopher Argent which was possibly a false name since he's a con man. I'm pretty much an expert on being a conman since I've seen Paper Moon about 3 zillion times and I also watched every episode of Lost that had Sawyer in it. So I can speak with some expertise on this subject.

And then the next page shows some guys at the Pentagon who are way ahead of me! They already know his real name is Cole Cash! Unless that's his fake real name! Sometimes con men have two aliases! Maybe even three if they're extra tricky! One of the guys in the pentagon is Cole's brother, Max Cash! They also mention Cole was a Delta Operator but I don't know what that means. Probably something military. Something that enabled him to learn how to use guns really well because he uses guns in the comic book and there are bullet holes in the title of the comic as well.

Finally, Grifter is hanging out in a cemetery where he still hears the demons in his head. He whines about wanting his 17 hours back. So with the 17 minutes/days/hours discrepancy, perhaps these demon things are fucking with his timeline somehow. Or something.

So that's the start of Grifter. He had a partial alien transplant that possibly only half-took which allows him to hear the hive mind of the Daemonites. I know they're called Daemonites because I'm looking at the cover to Issue #2 right now. Plus the government wants him and they've sent his brother MAX CASH after him. Also Gretchen, his con woman partner, thinks he flaked on her and took her share of their con, so she is setting the local police on him. I bet next issue people start shooting at other people!