STAR WARS: TAG & BINK ARE DEAD #1

By: Arnold T. Blumberg
Date: Sunday, October 07, 2001

Tom Stoppard is spinning in his grave, and he isn't even dead yet. That's right folks, I'm talking about the man who wrote one of the cleverest and funniest plays in history, the brilliant ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, which interwove its events into the already existing genius of William Shakespeare's HAMLET. Following the two hapless characters whose lives are irrevocably ruined by the machinations of Hamlet, Claudius and others during the course of the classic saga, Stoppard's play spoke to the futility of things, the tragedy of ignorance, and the ways in which the universe conspires to make some people miserable at all costs. For English majors like myself, it remains a cherished piece of literary legerdemain, with Stoppard expertly drawing together the myriad threads of Shakespeare's work, finding the gaps within which to place his action, and then examining the plight of arguably the two most tragic characters in the original play. They are pitiable not because of what they do, but because they never know why they're doing anything, and they pay for that blindness with their lives. Let's hope Tag and Bink are a bit luckier than their predecessors.

If you have to steal, steal from the best, and that's just what Kevin Rubio and Co. do here with Dark Horse's latest STAR WARS offering, TAG AND BINK ARE DEAD (now do you see where that title came from?). Tag and Bink are two clueless Rebels who find themselves on the Princess' ship in the opening moments of A NEW HOPE, and as we all remember, the situation isn't good. They're about to be boarded by the Empire, with Darth Vader himself close behind! Well, Tag and Bink make it, but only by changing their Rebel gear for some stormtrooper armor. From there, they find themselves hurtling from one awful set of circumstances to another as they literally weave in and out of the familiar story and turn up in the unlikeliest points. Who reported to the Imperial officer on the successful capture of the Princess' ship? Who was in that TIE fighter that had its communications jammed by Han and Chewie? Who accompanied Vader in the attack on Luke's X-wing? Yup, every single time. The results are hilarious and at times almost heart-rending who knew that throughout STAR WARS we were constantly meeting these same two guys in a variety of guises and watching their lives slowly falling apart?

Fans should find this a delightful addition to the STAR WARS story we've all known and loved. The excellent artwork by Marangon and Shum is cartoonish in a DROIDS kind of style and yet not as cloying (and of course, thanks to the time period, no Ewoks in sight...yet). Ever wonder why those two stormtroopers who fail to notice Ben Kenobi while they chat away about the "new BT-16" had more personality than any of the others? Well you're about to find out.

STAR WARS: TAG & BINK ARE DEAD

Grade: A

Issue: No. 1 (of 2)

Author(s): Kevin Rubio, Lucas Marangon, Howard M. Shum

Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

Price: $2.99

 


INCREDIBLE HULK #32 (506)
Bruce Banner's long battle with ALS comes to a predictable end


It's time to wipe the slate clean and take care of a few loose ends as this venerable title paves the way for a new writer horror legend Bruce Jones. In this issue, Jenkins and Co. put an end to the long, drawn-out tale of Bruce Banner's struggle with ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. Reed Richards, the Marvel Answer Man, comes up with a daring plan that he evidently hit upon while rereading his copy of the Kree-Skrull War trade paperback, and wouldn't you know it, Banner may be cured by issue's end! What a surprise!

Even in comic book land, this story arc was a ridiculous excursion down a side road with a very obvious dead end. Come on, was Banner really going to die? Of course not! And what other way would they write him out of it other than to invent some fantasy cure for a very real disease? The folks at Marvel try to cover this by providing a rather jarring, fourth-wall breaking infomercial concerning the lack of a cure for ALS in our reality, a bit that comes off less as a heartfelt expression of concern and more a desperate Band-Aid for a story that went too far and lost all credibility long ago. This was an ill-advised plot twist for the green-skinned monster and his lanky alter ego, but the character has always been a subject for experimentation. So far, it seems Peter David holds the record for performing so many of those experiments successfully, and that's a tough record to live up to.

This issue not only plunders Marvel's distant past (Ant-Man's "fantastic voyage" is a thinly veiled carbon copy of his predecessor's far more dramatic trip into the innards of the Vision many years ago), but the Hulk's as well, with the answer to his disease lying in the grave with his abusive father. How many times are they going to play that tired card of family woe? While these elements are old hat, the new artwork that accompanies them at least manages to fit the mood of the piece, and Tom Palmer can always be relied upon to lend a certain consistent Marvel Universe style to anything he inks.

For relative newcomers to Marvel and the Hulk, many of this issue's shortcomings will be invisible and therefore the rating might shoot up by, say, a letter grade. Truth to tell, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the plotting or pacing of the issue it does the job. The entire storyline itself just never worked, and the sledgehammer tactics necessary to bring about an ending and clear the decks for the next creative team are painfully apparent. Hulk smash!

INCREDIBLE HULK

Grade: C-

Issue: No. 32 (506)

Author(s): Paul Jenkins, Sean McKeever, Joe Bennett, Tom Palmer

Publisher: Marvel Comics

Price: $2.25