blogging by Andrew Wickliffe

Joe the Barbarian (2010) #8

Jb08

Wow… it ends even worse than I could have possibly imagined. I like how in Morrison’s reality, a gang of roaming thugs (who bring a vicious dog with them to attack kids) are scared off by a woman in a crappy old car. I guess he needed that one to work for the ending to be as lame as possible.

Beautiful, beautiful art. Murphy maybe outdoes himself with this issue. It’s just fabulous.

Morrison has three or four endings to the comic, which is oversize, but he could have gotten away with one of them. The first one requires not only Joe, the kid, to be a complete inobservance moron but his mom too. And one has to believe his dead father is a trickster jerk who likes stringing people along.

I’m glad I read it for two reasons.

First, Murphy.

Second, I like having examples of awful Morrison writing.

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One response to “Joe the Barbarian (2010) #8”

  1. Vernon Wiley

    Ouch! I think this is another series I recommended. Sometimes, being an art wank, I totally gloss over writing details, like plot, characters, rhythm, motivation, etc., for really fucking glorious art. Yes, Joe sucked eggs as a story, and could have been shitloads better had it been given an extra fifteen minutes of time conceptually. For me, though, Joe somehow squeaks in as a work that while could have been better, makes it on sheer chutzpah. While Joe’s plot and finish were straight out of a Little Rascals short, Sean Murphy’s art saves the day. It was a pleasure in this day & age to see a comic written, or rather, dashed off an idea of a comic scrawled, and have the artist carry the complete conceptual load when it comes to whether it succeeds as an entertaining experience or not. Joe finishes by a nose.

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