Comic Relief

My Current Pull List:

-Angel: After the Fall
-Buffy: Season Eight (TBPs only)
-Criminal
-Dead, She Said
-Spike: After the Fall
-Supernatural: Rising Son
-Tek Jensen
-Twelve


So, I was wondering if I'd been too hard on Criminal. I certainly have reason enough to be overly harsh lately. Then we have issue #5.

Sweet muffins of murea, it was just....awful. I mean really truly *terrible*, on a level where I still feel awed and gobsmacked by how very terrible it was.

I wasn't exactly in to the latest arc. With this issue, I discovered it wasn't doing the same story, 'different' angle of the last arc. No, this issue moves forward. If you can call it that. The three chars from the last issue, who were already flat and uninteresting and blandly repulsive, became even more ridiculous. In what, I think, was supposed to make them supposedly sympathetic, they became even more stock disgusting. Brubaker may see every female as a messed up whore and be totally turned on by it, but I am not.

Really, the helplessly manipulating slut is one of those types I never want to see in my fiction. Especially the one every man loves. Please. Who does that insult more? It doesn't help that I don't believe--and have never met--one that existed in real life. Much like the subset of 'every female is helpless' genre, it only makes me think that some people have never actually met a girl. Or maybe they just prefer the twisted ones in their heads to the real thing.

That aside, the men don't get off better. You can't care about anyone, and that's death to any story. And the writing, all round, is some of the worst I've ever read. The reactions of people aren't ever believable, the dialogue is so very cringy, you don't care where it's going because it's not going anywhere, and whole thing is more awkward than a bad crapped together B movie. The bad kind of bad, where it's not campy fun, but is just...embarrassing.

Needless to add, I knew halfway through this issue, I'm canceling Criminal. Simple. I don't support empty whores.