1 out of 5

Ugh.  I’m sure someone can come up with some examples that dismiss this statement, but celebrities don’t belong in comic books.  Fine, some classic Muhammad Ali book shimmers into memory, but howsabout comic books with celebrities that are just made to promote television shows?  Do those need to exist?

I’ve read that, as a writer, you should take any job that comes your way.  So I really don’t fault Mac Foster for this.  I mean, you do what you can, you write what you can, it keeps your brain moving.  So excuse the one star rating.  And I don’t like Jesse James.  I don’t care about celebrity gossip, I don’t care who he did or didn’t put his pee-pee in to, but that aside, just the sight of the dude annoys me.  He looks like every tattooed asshole who you want to roll your eyes at.  I’m judging the book based on this?  Sure, in part.  I mean, I’m judging the TV show, about (from wiki) “Jesse James doing ostensibly death-defying stunts,” and I’m judging that word, ‘ostensibly,’ and I’m judging Spike TV, and I’m judging the marketing team that realized that part of Jesse James’s following would think a comic book ‘leading’ into the show is a cool idea.  For the actual creative team’s part, Mac Foster tries to write James as a typical badass, outrunning death, and for a few page mini that was bought and paid for by a creative consultant, somewhere, he does his best to develop some action and an idea that would work for a Ghost Rider-esque story.  Penciler Jackson Herbert does the same, dropping a lot of shadows into the mix but giving us some good paneling and consistent art.  So I judge them not.

I was given this as a freebie along with some comic purchases, and there’s no price-tag on the cover, so totes marketing creation, fine fine fine.  But celebrities – celebrities like Jesse James, who could only exist in our reality TV sleeves-of-tats-by-the-time-yer-18 times – celebrities of that caliber shouldn’t have even been celebrities, and shouldn’t be in comics.  I normally argue for this existence of such things to allow me to exist the way I do in the world I prefer, but I honestly doubt the world would change without the existence of JJ or the short-lived TV show which shared a name with this lil’ freebie.  yaaayyy