7 PSYCHOPATHS #1
What did the
iFanboy
community think?
Pulls
Artist: Sean Phillips
Size: pages
Price: 3.99
Superhero comics were made in the age of Hitler. I understand that. To call Hitler “a bad man” is to commit the ultimate understatement. But in seventy years of writing superhero comics, crime comics, western comics, romance comics, satirical comics, childrens’ comics, noir comics, mystery comics, the most often used foil has to be Hitler. The most common reference to a villain being bad is Hitler. Yes, Hitler was evil. Beyond reproachable evil. His name should never fall out of our lexicon. He should be taught in every history class a genocidal maniac, but can we please please please please please stop putting references to him in comics?
In the X-Men Blind Science one shot this week, Dr. Rao, defending the existence of mutants in an apocalyptic future saus “Someone else tried to excuse genocide that way, once. He died in a bunker under Berlin, and the whole world cheered.” There are lots of other genocidal maniacs in the world. None of them are household names like Hitler, but they would be if more writers used names like Brezhnev, Milosevic, and Kim Il Sung.
Alternately, the main villain in The Second Coming crossover is an obvious stand-in for Hitler. The man/sentinel/machine/whathaveyou wants to kill all mutants. No one has to say “That Bastion is like Hitler!” We, the reader, can infer that the villain is a horrific maniac who wants to wipe out an entire race. He doesn’t need a small mustache and a goose step.
My point is, Hitler is a lazy villain. Many of the reviews I’ve read of this comic have compared it to Inglorious Basterds. And most of those reviews hailed this as original because it sends a group of people after Hitler instead of just “one lone nut”. It’s still another fucken Hitler comic. And, I”m sorry, it’s not a good one. The dialog is stilted: “What did I tell you, Colonel? The closed-mindedness of a woman!” “You’re our best Susan, who else is there?” “She’s clearly not up to the task colonel. Let’s leave her here to her nursing and diaper changing and find someone useful to us.” “Rather smug, this one, does he ever shut his mouth?”
Because we are writing ABOUT the forties, we have to ignore sixty years of improved dialog? I wasn’t alive in the forties, but my grandparents were, and the impression that I get is that the dialog in WWII era movies was as accurate as Snoop Dogg’s “languizzle” was to the early 00’s. Sure, *some* people talked like that, but they weren’t taken seriously. This reads like they took an old script, and added Sean Phillips art to it. And, while I’m not a huge Sean Phillips fan, I do respect that his art, at least, looks right here. It feels old without feeling forced. Regrettably, the same is not true for anything else in this comic.
Art: 4 - Very Good
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god, i hate these WWII comics about Hilter that mention Hilter constantly. I mean, Really?! Just once i would like to see a WWII comics that was about Abraham Lincoln
Actually, Edward, I would like to see that. Wouldn’t you? It would at least be new ground.
@edward: Check out Ennis’s Battlefields comics where they’re fighting a war against Hitler, and barely ever mention his name.
The Point of this story is to kill HILTER
Yes, which, as I say in the review, is a lazy premise. And it’s not executed very well. Much like Hitler.
I just seems a little srange to compliant about a book which is obviously about Hilter because it features Hilter.
You wouldn’t buy a Spider-man comic and say "Hey, enough with this Spider-man stuff already’, right?
I would absolutely rail against a new Spider-Man comic if it was a crappy, lazily written, Spider-man book. I would say there were too many Spiderman books, and they needed to come up with a new premise. Which is what I said about this Hitler comic. It’s not good. It’s bad. It’s a terrible comic involving Hitler. I would be much happier if it were a terrible comic about Abraham Lincoln. Because there aren’t many Abraham Lincoln comics. There are many comics that reference Hitler. Too many. Exactly like Spider-Man comics, of which there are also too many. And I might spend the first paragraph or three of my review ranting about how lazy it is to put out a Spiderman comic. And then I’d go into detail about why that particular comic was poor, which is what I did here.
In case you haven’t noticed, I review a shit ton of comics here. Sometimes ones that I don’t think I’m going to like, because there are often pleasant surprises. This wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t good. It was a bad comic. About Hitler. And I will complain about it being a bad comic about Hitler as I see fit.
But you wouldn’t rail against a new spider-man book because it’s about spider-man, would you?
And yes, you write a lot and i do enjoy your stuff so relax. I’m not having a go.
Also, where are all these Hilter comic books you’re talking about?
@Akamuu I think you have a valid point about the over-saturation of Hitler books. But I will say that sales drive this industry and people will buy it hearing things like Inglorious Basterds, Hitler, Nazis. This comic was originally printed in French and my guess is whoever translated it, didn’t translate it to well if the dialogue is stilted. I find that comics that get translated have stilted dialogue because academic minds who normally translate text aren’t working on it, it’s probably some poor intern.
@summer I’m not sure if The Killer is translated, but it’s a great fucking book…writing and art.
If you think the market is over saturated with Hilter books i think you have rocks in your head.
What? there’s this book. Battlefields (which isn’t really about Hilter), Hellboy and BPRD (which aren’t really about Hilter), Captain American issues set in WWII (which aren’t really about Hilter), Justice Society (which isn’t really about Hilter) etc
Fo shizzle, my brizzle, akammuizzle. The revizzle was off the hizzle and completely accuratizzle except for the claimizzle that peeps don’t conversizzle like thissle.
Sigh…
@ScorpionMasada: Well, they do now, obviously. I’m saying it didn’t catch on quickly enough. 😉
@summersleep: I didn’t know that this was originally in French. I’ll see if I can track a copy down (I’m sure it’s right next to the first printing of Action Comics #1 .) because I suspect you’re completely right about some poor intern at Boom! Comics having to translate, and not really having the grasp of languages to do more than translate the text rather than translating the intention of the text.
@Edward: No, they’re not all books starring Hitler. But Hitler has been the foil for Captain America, Superman, Batman, Namor, The Fantastic Four, Hellboy, whatever the name of the character was in Jason’s "I Killed Hitler" (which was a fantastic book), Dr. McNinja, Magneto; those are the comics I can think of without doing any sort of research or clicking over to Google. While he hasn’t been as prominent in comics as Obama was in early 2009, he’s been a big part of comic history. More often than not, comics involving Hitler are not very good.
If you want to read a weirdly good book that involves him, I reccomend picking up Jason’s "I Killed Hitler". It’s odd Norwegiany goodness.
@Akamuu: Really? When did Batman fight Hilter? Was it 60 years ago?
@Edward: It wasn’t recent at all for Batman or Superman. Not 60 years ago, but at least 40.
Exactly, dude, 40 years
it’s not like Hilter is popping up in every book like Deadpool
@Edward: He may not be Deapool, but he is a tired, tired trops in media.
What if Hitler turns out to be Deadpool?
Sounds like a good cliffhanger for the end of this comic.
Of course, there is the argument that the book itself kind of addresses the notion of "TOO MANY ASSASSINATE HITLER PLOTS" in it’s first couple of pages, when the general shouts about the fact that of course they’ve tried over and over to kill the mustachioed maniac.
Thing is, books like Battlefields are great, but they employ a more realistic approach to the WW2 story. This, like many other WW2 stories, is a caper pure and simple. It’s a Hitler assassination plot in the form of a heist movie, with this issue being about the putting together of the gang. There’s lots of stories about lots of the same things out there, I don’t think the "Hitler" genre is any more overused than others. I also allowed for the translation from French (which is always problematic, no matter who does the translating. The Stieg Larsson books are terrific, translated by a preofessional, but still not perfect) and could see no problems with the language per se. I liked it, I liked it a lot.
@Akamuu: Tell me about it. It seems like every year around memorial day and veterans day media just won’t shut up about Hilter and WW2. And the History Channel, i don’t understand why they play documentaries about WW2 and not cooking shows or music videos.
Can i just been it back to my original point that it is rediclous to complain that the book is about Hilter when that is obviously the point.
and another thing; Ingloriuos Basterds wasn’t about one lone nut. that is explained in the TITLE of the movie. plurial, yeah?
Redundizzle.
sigh…
I thought this sucked because the premise was SOOOO contrived. Definitely dropping.
@ed I’m not sure what History Channel you’ve been watching, but they’ve been off the WWII kick for a while. There’s a shit load of great programming now that has nothing to do with WWII.
@akamuu I gave it a 4. I agree that the whole Hitler thing is overly saturated in many forms of media, but I did enjoy this issue although it is quite formulaic. We’ll see how it translates and maybe I can give a better assessment after reading the first 3. For now, they have me.
Vadomeezy, dropping knowledge.
@scorpion lmao. what the fuck are doing?
I don’t dizknow . . .
@vada:i actually only get free to air channels here. so i don’t get the history channel unless you consider my brian like a history channel of knowledge.
this has been a fun thread, hasn’t it?
indeed:)
I was afraid of this. Much like actors playing parts in cheesy retro flicks sometimes get caught in their phony forties lingo, Scorpion is caught in a Snizoop lizoop. As far as I know, there is only one cure: a marathon watching of Ken Burn’s babseball documentary from the nineties. Downsides include appearing to move at 500 frames per second, and randomly shouting "No, batter, batter" at extremely inappropriate times.