Saturday, March 22, 2008

Semi-Pre-Joe Casey Comics: Wildcats #6

[Continuing the epic build-up to when Joe Casey took over Wildcats and fucking tore shit up. New posts Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.]

Once again, Joe Casey puts the words into the mouths of the characters here after Lobdell told them what to do. However, this issue is a bit better than the previous one, if only for one line:

"THIS IS BECOMING POSITIVELY ABSURD--!"

Now, I want to read that line as Casey's criticism of the plot here which has Grifter chasing Kenyan through the streets of New York while Spartan steals a jet to further help take Kenyan down. That's pretty much all that happens, actually. But, as I've said before, it does set up Casey's run... or, at least, the first three issues of it in this case. Especially when Emp tells Grifter not to kill Kenyan out in the open. Why would he say that, dear reader? Why?

Remember how issue four had that awesome letter taking the book to task? Well, this issue's letter page has a couple of responses, both that felt the need to include all of the effort and "heart" put into making comics--which, I'm sorry, are not relevent when discussing the quality of books. Somewhere along the lines, we all got the idea that loving the characters and being a true fan actually meant something, but it doesn't. All it means is that someone's got an excuse to produce bad comics.

Ugh. I don't know what else to say. I'm actually tempted to just include my assessment of issue seven here right now so that we can get to the Casey run sooner. But, that would also mean reading issue seven right now, which seems like a bad idea. It's a Warbalde-centric issue that really does nothing and is barely referenced during Casey's run. But, hey, maybe I'll come up with something to say on Tuesday.