Not all of them have a moral.

Book: Preacher: Gone to Texas

Writer: Garth Ennis

Artist: Steve Dillon

Published: 1996 (DC, fancy paperback edition)

Pages: 199

So now I know what a face without a jaw but otherwise unharmed looks like. Also, can a guy (different one) survive with the skin of his face peeled off? I want to say yes. All he’s missing is covering and some small nerve endings, right? And do all angels have Mohawk-shaped hair they leave flowing instead of spiked? Why do the scientist/peon angels have to wear sweatsuits? What exactly are the removable pointy metal bits used for on the priest’s shirt collar? And can the journalist please keep his fedora on? I mean, it’s ugly, but the one time he took it off it looked like something has been chewing on his hair.

 This pales, of course, next to the hard-drinking curse-spitting easy-going Irish vampire and his ingenious use of his regenerative abilities. I mention him first because he’s my favorite. There’s the preacher who’s lost his faith and then been possessed by the unholy union of archangel and she-demon; he’s looking for literal God, who has abandoned heaven. And Tulip, the preacher’s ex, who has abandoned her no-firearms rule but not her piss and vinegar about getting dumped and stranded five years ago.

Oh! And poor Arseface, the son of a Texas sheriff. He shot himself because Kirk Cobain did, but Arseface survived with a giant crater where his mouth/nose/eyebrows used to be and a fierce protective instinct for the father who scorned him. He doesn’t have much of a role…this time. We leave him yelling “From now on I will be Arseface!” to the sky in the best supervillain tradition, somewhere roughly ¾ of the way through the actual story.

I’m sorry this is scattered. It’s how my brain ran through this comic, and let me tell you, it was a hell of a good time. This is volume 1 in a decently long series, but it ended neatly and with an open wink: “There are a million stories in this naked city. Not all of them have a moral.”

Excuse me while I go paste that over my writing space now.  

Texas and stereotypes and women and GAH

Book: How Perfect Is That

Author: Sarah Bird

Published: 2008 (Knopf)

Pages: 302

Strap in, y’all. This is a shouty one.

SARAH BIRD HOW FUCKING DARE YOU. How fucking dare she what? I’M SO GLAD YOU ASKED.

Her social-climbing protagonist bitches about climbing back to the top where she can by $5,000 and lord it over her old frienemies SO MUCH that by Chapter 2, I was actively routing for the IRS to haul her away. (THEY WERE NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN.)

She bitched so much about staying in the old “hippie” college dorm of hers that took her in FOR NO GOOD REASON AT ALL that I was actively routing for them to vote her out in their pretend-suspenseful House Vote of Doom while she sat there batting her fucking eyelashes and handing out fucking brownies so she could stay in the very place that she trashed.

She’s the one that gets everybody else in trouble through her own stupid fucking fault, yet they’re the ones that end up pitching in to her whacky scheme to save her own ass DOING THE EXACT SAME THINGS THAT GOT HER AND THEM SO DEEPLY IN TROUBLE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

AND IT WORKED.

*headdesk*

Unlikable (I mean I really, really hate her) protagonist. Relationships that make Jon and Garfield look like sophisticated colleagues. Leaps of logic that everyone should’ve poked SO MANY GODDAMN HOLES THROUGH, pretending There Is No Other Choice just because the author can’t think of any—all of these things make me angry, all of these things make me hate this book and groan about how many War and Peaces women are going to have to write to get beyond this prototypical “chick lit” that shits on every fun quirky instinct ladywriters have.

But—SARAH BIRD YOU ARE SO MUCH BETTER THAN THIS. Have you COMPLETELY LOST IT since The Yokota Officers’ Club? That remains one of the best, most complex yet typical families I’ve ever read about, with such a unique mouthpiece in Bertie and, more importantly, her younger sister who is a complete bitch yet ENTIRELY SYMPATHETIC AND HUMAN  that there is NO POSSIBLE WAY you wrote like this on accident.

This is a sick joke. I AM VERY DISAPPOINTED IN YOU, SARAH BIRD. DISHONOR ON YOU AND YOUR COW.