wrathchilde triumphant?

Got the urge to look through some back issues this weekend so I rolled by the capitol "J" junk store in Williamsburg on Sunday in a double-bloody-mary haze somewhere between contentment and heatstroke. Had it not been for my brunchheadedness I probably wouldn't have bothered since I've rifled through the same filthy and incomplete runs of Extreme Justice and ripped Underworld Unleashed crossover issues enough times to start thinking I should get some outsized shoulder pads for myself. But to eschew the esoteric references, I found some fun gems in there this time. Namely, Death's Head II #4, a comic that I took only because I was amazed at the succinct collection of every terrible 90's comic book trend together on one cover. I couldn't find a picture of this piece of crap on the internet, and neon-violence-tits-cacophony-silly-Wrathchilde didn't bring back any hits on Google images, so here is the cover to the series' first issue:



Now look at that, add 2 more generic jumblefreak characters and one of the whoreish X-men (who doesn't even speak in the issue) and imagine that the artist and colorist gave up after the above cover. If you can't imagine it, you are probably close to how insanely headache inducing the actual image is. Also, there is some standard Jim-Lee-wannabe art from Liam Sharp (read Testament!), and some grit teeth and posturing or something. I might moan about current trends in comics but after perusing this foamy dump I am inclined to cut the recent trends some slack.

Speaking of recent trends, in a previous post, I'd whined at length about the transformation of Speedball into the spiky little bundle of sorrow, PENANCE. In the Junk Store I also found a comic from over ten years ago that realized the darkening of the character was a bad idea:


As a happy coincidence, this issue wasn't that bad. Despite the perfunctory crossover with the Infinity War, it was a neat little story about Speedball having to deliver pizzas for the bigger heroes before running into his ill-advised doppelganger. Just a done-in-one with early art by Darick Robertson. A rare delight from a generally tapped out location.