Xombi 2

The most interesting bit of this issue is an upskirt glimpse of a female minor in a Catholic school outfit to which we are made privy. Typically, you’d label it a humdrum bit of fan service and maybe get an editorial or two out of it, replete with a counterbalance of a near triple-digit number of sexist commenters and their always-welcome liberal approach to grammar, but as said glimpse shows neither sign of buttocks or genitalia, just smooth flesh with nary a provocative contour to irk anyone’s sensibility – an echo of the disappointment you felt when you took off Barbie’s sensible business outfit and partook of the female form as the Lord originally intended, sans any built-in sense of sin and perfect amongst all of Paradise’s panoply of creation because of this – it’s problematic.

(Surely this is a fetish – the ideal for fellas for whom frustration is synonymous with desire, so much so that the only woman worth admiring is the one with whom physical engagement would prove a literal impossibility. Good for them.)

Anyway, stuff is still happening, to reference my now-immortal review* of the first issue, but now it’s happening in that disconnected way where scenes just pop up and cut off in a way that disregards any sense of dramatic momentum (DC better be sending a check Paul Grist’s way – he’s got that kind of shit copyrighted), which suggests that Rozum just ripped out two pre-written pages of panel time to meet DC’s “20 pages for $2.99” guideline, though perhaps I’m giving him too much credit. And beyond that nearly insurmountable barrier of tone-deafness, everything that constitutes the meat of this thing is a workmanlike plod through dull stretches of exposition and sequences of the haziest consequence, with arbitrary details (A rabbi! Golems! Loose change! Some dude!) inclined to jut out at odd intervals and immediately become the center of the action. It’s a lot like listening to your five-year old niece narrate a dream she just had, but with none of the energy.

It’s kinda crap, but Detective Comics Comics will still get my money – FRAZER IRVING + MONSTERS is a mighty equation, hard to ignore.

* Nina’s is better.