Jamie Bishop killed at Virginia Tech

Glenn Hauman

Glenn is VP of Production at ComicMix. He has written Star Trek and X-Men stories and worked for DC Comics, Simon & Schuster, Random House, arrogant/MGMS and Apple Comics. He's also what happens when a Young Turk of publishing gets old.

2 Responses

  1. Tom Fitzpatrick says:

    Uhhhh, I don't mean to complain, but when you click on the link for the on-line comics, nothing appears. Just a bunch of lines.

    • Russ Rogers says:

      Now that the link is fixed, the actual comic isn't any better. It made more sense as a blank page."The Luftar are possessed by demons on their birthdays. Anyone can kill you. Everyone will try." Because we don't have enough preposterous premises flying about in this book, here's one more, really, really STUPID one! I hope that Page who overheard Neil mention that it was his birthday tries to kill him. I hope Neil kills the Page in self defense so that he can forget that he did it the next day."Didn't you know? The Luftar shoot flames out of their ass on their birthdays. People will chase you around with fire extinguishers if they find out!""Don't tell anyone it's your birthday! The Luftar go into hiding on their birthdays, because it's our tradition that you must give a gift to anyone you see on your birthday. And if you run out of gifts, we are bound by tradition to cut off your fingers, one by one, and take them as our gift. Ask the Captain to show you his hand.""You must keep your birthday a secret! The Luftar don't believe in the passage of time! If you let anyone know that you believe you are one year older, you will be stoned as a heretic!"That's kind of a fun game. Think of nonsensical reasons why Neil can't admit it's his birthday! It's more fun than trying to make sense of this turd of a plot point. In a culture where it's "open season" on anybody who is having a birthday, anybody could kill anyone at any time. You would just have to claim, "Oh, he mentioned it was his birthday. And I thought I saw a demon behind his eyes. So I killed him." We have seen NO demons anywhere in this story. And now we are expected to believe that demons are SO common that people are thought to be possessed by them regularly, at least once a year. Where could a Luftar go into hiding on a flying ship? What a steaming load of crap!This comic makes NO sense. It doesn't even try.Prince Orum took out a squadron of flyers and he was the ONLY person to make it home alive. How did the Helmut find ANOTHER squadron of flyers to follow him anywhere? Did Orum just lop off the head of anybody who said, "no"?Can't another unexplained wormhole show up and suck Neil back through it. Neil could just wake up in bed and say, "Oh my! What a strange dream I had!" The End.Maybe in Black Ice #22, the Page could take a shovel to the back of Neil's skull, screaming, "Happy Birthday!" Maybe this book should just stop. OK. Good idea. Neil gets killed for no good reason. Because nothing happens in this comic with any kind of reason. Then he wakes up in bed and it was all a dream. Whew! Story's over and I don't have to waste any more time or money reading a free comic.Seriously, I'm sure many people will be happy to hear me say this, but I'm giving up! Someone would have to pay me to read another issue of "Black Ice." This has been a Black Hole where I have dithered away too much of my time, attention and effort. I used to be a big fan of Mike Baron. Now I'm so disappointed, disillusioned even, a tad bit disgusted.I'm revoking the "Artistic License." "Black Ice" has lost all credibility with me. Obviously Mike Baron and Mike Gold just don't care. They don't care if the story makes sense. They don't care if characters act rationally or even within character. We're only a year into the writing of Black Ice, just twenty-one issues and I've run out of patience. I'm tired of waiting for things to come together. Baron and Gold think that just because this is some sort of alternate reality there doesn't need to be ANY reality in the story.This is horrible writing. Worse editing. This is the biggest, steaming pile on ComicMix, at least so far. I feel sorry for Lee Oaks. He's the rookie. He's only trying to build a name for himself in comics, trying to establish a resume and he will forever be linked to this turd-burger of a story. Good luck, Lee. Goodbye, Black Ice.