Mystery. Desire. And Tentacles.

Some would say that offering solutions to mysteries is just good storytelling, but I’m not sure I agree. Often, the mystery is the thing for me. Mysteries tantalize and tempt. They seduce. We’re drawn to them, and as much as we might desire their solution… Sometimes, it’s sweeter to want. All of which brings us to our topic for today…

Fatale 14, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

If ever there was a book about wanting, it’s this one. The lead (if you’re not familiar) is Josephine, an apparently immortal beauty who inspires an irresistable desire in men. But it’s a terrible, ruinous desire, a passion that typically leads to madness and death. And they die, of course, because Fatale is also a book that’s all about mysteries. The secrets of Josephine’s true nature, and of the bizarre cult that’s hounded her across the decades.

So, considering my perspective on mysteries, and the series’ preoccupation with wanting, I’m really quite happy with the way Ed Brubaker has chosen to start offering explanations. The more we learn about the world of Fatale, the more mysterious everything gets. Or… if not mysterious, at least weird. Really, truly weird, in the best sense of that word. I mean, at one point it looked like we were just dealing with some kind of run-of-the-mill Satan worshippers with a Lovecraftian edge. But now, after this current arc of flashback stories, we find that the series is actually about a deeper supernatural world, a dark secret world of the spirit lurking in the corner of your eye. It’s still Lovecraftian, of course…

…and kudos to Sean Phillips for making the series’ trademark tentacle-headed visage so primally, pants-wettingly scary. That’s no mean feat in a world where cute cuddly Cthulhu plushies are a thing. I mean, sure they’re funny, but there are a lot of people who prefer their cold implacable cosmic horror defanged, and I’m glad this book shoots those people a great big middle finger every time that bastard pops up.

Kudos also to Brubaker, who gives us a classic Lovecraftian freak-out this issue, when an army cryptographer tries to wrap his brain around some Eldertext.

Looks like Jeff failed his Sanity Check.

As you can probably tell from the artwork, this issue takes place during World War II, which is a great setting for this kind of weird horror tale. Any war would be, probably, but the spectre of Nazism lends that era the perfect cache. As the narrator argues, it’s a natural environment for these creatures, one in which they can all but operate openly. That sentiment very nearly makes them too commonplace for my taste, but then Brubaker saves it by revealing something kinda squidgy about the bald bruisers who make up the cult’s rank and file. I won’t give the surprise away here, but now I do understand why they’re immune to Josephine’s supernatural wiles.

That’s always going to be a potential problem with this book, though. Brubaker and Phillips are working very much in a grounded pulp tradition, a style that’s typically far more interested in solutions than mysteries. That tension works in the book’s favor most of the time, mind you, and they’ve done a fine job in recent issues of exploiting it. But I’ll be very curious to see, as we move into the series’ second half, if they continue to maintain the proper balance. Or if, like Josephine’s doomed lovers, we have our desires slaked and find that it was the seduction we preferred all along.

Return to the Nerd Farm

So. Been gone a while. Nearly three months, in fact. There’s no excuse, really. I’ve been working on other projects, but I still could have carved out some time to write about the funnybooks if I’d wanted. There’s certainly been no dearth of good ones to discuss. So I dunno. I guess it’s just that I wrote a satirical rant on the death of Ishmael and didn’t know how to follow that up.

I toyed, briefly, with doing more of it. Becoming the Stephen Colbert of funnybook commentators. But I only got halfway through an argument that Jack Kirby deserved to be treated like dirt by his publisher before 1) I started feeling a little sick to my stomach over saying that shit even in jest, and 2) I realized that I couldn’t possibly be any funnier than the guys who make those arguments for real on funnybook message boards all over the web. So that was out.

I almost came back a few weeks ago when I made my weekly jaunt to the funnybook store and found nothing I wanted to buy. That was a pretty momentous occasion. I’ve been making that trip for 25 years, and had never before walked out empty-handed. That’s right: every week, for a quarter-freaking-century, I bought at least one funnybook that I really wanted to read. And that’s just the weekly trips. If you toss in my more erratic childhood visits to newsstands and grocery store spinner racks, it’s more like 40 years of never-frustrated funnybook-buying.

On the one hand, that made me feel sort of sad and pathetic. And on the other, it gutted me. Which in turn made me feel even more sad and pathetic. I started writing a column about that, but realized it really wasn’t worth more than a couple of paragraphs. Then I got over myself, thought “First World Problem,” and stopped whining.

(It was all just an artifact of scheduling, anyway: the following week, I spent double what I normally do and was damned happy to have so very many good comics.)

So why am I finally back now? Well… I found that I really missed the ol’ nerd farm. I mean… It’s been a nice vacation. I’ve enjoyed flexing my fiction-writing muscles these last three months. But I’ve begun to miss running off at the mouth about comics. While I doubt that I’ll try to write about everything I’m reading anymore, it’ll probably be good for my sanity if I crank out one column a week. Yeah. Let’s see how that goes…

In the meantime, just so this entry isn’t completely devoid of new funnybook goodness, feast your eyes on the prog-rock-ready cover to last week’s Prophet #35:

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(This book continues to wow, by the way, even as it moves beyond its “weird future vignettes” stage and into something of a “sweeping space epic for freaks” period. I will always miss the era of disturbing insectoid mysteries and vagina-faced monkeys, but this is good, too.)

A Brief Word on Funnybook Death

Yesterday, one of the most beloved characters in literary history died.

RIP

I’m referring, of course, to Ishmael.

The beloved narrator of Moby Dick, Herman Melville’s classic tale of sea-faring adventure for kids, Ishmael is remembered by children around the world for his plucky charm, his heart-warming friendship with the gruff Captain Ahab, and his encyclopedic knowledge of 19th Century whaling techniques.

And now, he is dead.

Ishmael met his demise not on the sea he’d devoted his life to, and not at the fins of that dastardly white whale, but on the frozen wastes of Antarctica, beneath the rails of a motorized sled hired by evil industrialist Charles Foster Kane. How can this be, you ask? How can such a beloved literary figure have died in a manner so dramatically inappropriate?

The blame lies with Alan Moore, a British funnybook writer of notorious reputation. Moore (a sorcerer) has disgracefully opted to prop up the flagging sales of his bloated League of Extraordinary Gentlemen franchise with the cheapest stunt possible: character death. It’s not a new trick; Shakespeare did the same thing when he used the totally unnecessary death of John Falstaff to spice up the otherwise-bland Henry V  (confusingly, only the fourth of the “English Hal” plays). But it was a bad idea then, and it’s a bad idea now.

When will these writers see that death only hurts a story? Certainly, it gives you short-term dramatic gains, helping to define the characters around the deceased and giving satisfying closure to fictional lives well-spent. But think of all the endless potential of Ishmael! Think of all the stories that could be told (and the money that could be made)! And… need I even say it? Think of the children! The little ones who love their old pal Ishmael, and who don’t want to see him crushed beneath a symbol of lost innocence and the relentless march of American progress!

But this matters not to Alan Moore, a tired funnybook hack who thinks that stories should have endings, and that concerns such as “theme” and “narrative cohesion” are more important than making sure that fans can always get all the stories they want about any character, no matter how bad and uninspired they become. Why, Moore even protested the Watchmen prequels DC Comics is making so much money with right now! Obviously, he is a man of warped judgment.

What’s next, Alan? Killing off the Boy Wonder?

 

Nemo: Heart of Ice, by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill, is available in fine funnybook stores everywhere. But no self-loathingrespecting fan of serialized adventure fiction should read it. It’s, like, good and stuff.

Corporate Supermen of the Brave New World: Catching Up on February Funnybooks

Lotsa time to read of late, little time to write. Which means that I need to abandon my usual long-winded review style, and settle in for something a little faster. So, without further ado… QUICKIES! ARE! GO!

Action Comics 17, by Grant Morrison, Brad Walker, Rags Morales, and A Host of Inkers

So ultimately, I think this will be looked back on as the “Vyndktvx for Dummies” issue of the Grant Morrison Action Comics run. In it, as Our Hero fights the ultimate test-marketed Superman, Vyndktvx runs around, popping in and out of the timeline, breaking the fourth wall, and explaining directly to the readers what he’s been up to all this time. It works better than it sounds like it might, owing both to Morrison’s skill and to the higher-dimensional nature of Vyndktvx himself. And I’m sure it was at least partly necessitated by the two or three years’ worth of stories that I understand were cut out of the run when Morrison decided he’d had enough of whatever’s wrong with DC editorial. But it still feels like the writer sighing, giving up, and finally just saying, “For those of you who haven’t understood the last year and a half, here’s what’s been going on.”

For those of us who’ve been following along, unfortunately, that makes this issue a bit of a bore. It’s not all bad, though. The Corporate Superman ™ is pretty hysterical as he rants on and on about his supposed superiority to Our Hero like some kind of robotic fascist. And this issue’s cliffhanger is pretty perfect, as well. I won’t spoil it, but… it’s bald.

At any rate. I think there’s one or maybe two more issues left in Morrison’s Action run, and I look forward to them every bit as much as I dread them. It’s been nice having a good Superman comic to read, after all, and I will miss that when it’s gone.

 

Powers Bureau 1, by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming

And holy shit Powers is back! It’s off to a good start this time around, too. Picking up a few days after the cataclysm that ended the previous volume, we find that all Powers cases have now been declared Federal matters, and that Walker and Pilgrim have been drafted by the Feds. It’s a good set-up, especially as the last few story arcs really did feel like they’d outgrown the purview of local police.

That trend continues here in typical Powers fashion, as Deena Pilgrim finds herself investigating a case where anyone coming into contact with Powers semen gets pregnant. That’s any contact, you understand. Just getting some on your hand is enough. And you don’t even have to be female, as Pilgrim’s erstwhile FBI partner discovers with rather explosive results:

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Heh. So that’s Powers as usual, then. Big profane fun, filled with snappy dialogue, some good character drama, and all the gory WTF moments you could hope for. Good to have it back.

 

Fatale 12, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

One of the best books on the stands for a full year now, Fatale shifts gears impressively in this issue, as we flash back to medieval times, and meet a previous femme fatale. Aside from being a good story in its own right, this issue also has big implications for the series as a whole. I don’t know if Brubaker ever plans on fully defining the supernatural elements of the series, and I kind of hope he doesn’t. But this issue pulls the veil back farther than we’ve seen it pulled before, and it’s creepy as all hell:

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Seriously, what the fuck?! And that’s not even the creepiest panel in the comic! There’s another unholy thing later that’s even more disturbing! But since they gave this one away on the back cover, I figured I’d share it, and let you stumble upon the other one yourself.

At any rate. This was a nice change of pace from Brubaker and Philips’ usual stuff. But the setting suits them, and I hope they do more like it. If not in Fatale, then maybe in whatever project follows it. A larger serving of medieval noir might be nice. This one certainly was.

 

Manhattan Projects 9, by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra

Under that classy bit of graphic design lurks a completely batshit funnybook. In the current storyline, our science bastards heroes have come up hard against the Men Who Really Rule the World:

Considering that I could have happily read a comic about those guys, or at least enjoyed them as bad guys here, for years on end, I was a bit disappointed in their quick defeat this issue. But on the other hand, there’s really not a lot to them beyond artist Nick Pitarra’s fabulous character designs, so maybe it’s for the best. I am, I must admit, fully capable of letting my love of luchador banking magnates overcome my better judgment.

This has been the series’ “all out action” story arc, which has been a lot of fun to read. I do hope it gets back to its weirder, more menacing roots next issue, though. With all the gun ablazin’ silliness going on, the main characters have become a bit cartoonish, and I’m ready for Infinite Oppenheimer and Einstein Blue to disturb me again. With as bizarre a premise as this series has, it would be all too easy for it to degenerate into cheap comedy. There was a bit of that this issue, and though I might not have been able to resist going for an Einstein-as-Rambo gag, either, I don’t want it to become the new normal.

 

Aaaaand, I think that’s all I have time for tonight. I’ll try to do a bit more catch-up tomorrow. Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson’s Happy! wrapped up last week, after all, and there was another absolutely gorgeous issue of JH Williams’ Batwoman. Both well-worth talking about, I assure you. Hopefully, I’ll see you then.

Fare thee well, Johnny Constantine. We Hardly Knew Ye.

Hellblazer 300, by Peter Milligan, Giuseppe Camuncoli, and Stefano Landini

And so it ends. The longest-running funnybook for grown-ups in American comics history (*) published its final issue today. And we are all the poorer for it.

(*Technically, Hellblazer only shares the title of longest-running adult funnybook with Dave Sim’s Cerebus. That also ran for 300 issues, and was a lot better most of that time (even when its author was busy turning into a misogynist nutbar). But if you count annuals, specials, mini-series, and one-shots, Hellblazer actually published more issues. It doesn’t make me happy to point that out, but… It’s true.)

I’ve followed this book, off and on, from the beginning. As I believe I said when its cancellation was announced a few months ago, it’s been a constant, comforting presence for me, always there on the rack for me to dip a toe into when I wanted a taste of modern urban horror. Some runs were better than others, but even its worst moments were better than Justice League Dark. That book features a dumbed-down version of Constantine who lacks the original’s depth, but somehow tries to make up for it by shooting shiny lights out of his hands. Frankly, he just makes me sad. Sad for John, sad for myself, and sad for the funnybook industry as a whole. Because it’s that version of the character that’s going to soldier on in the monthly corporate funnybook trenches, in a new series that will no doubt be embarrassing itself on a monthly basis any day now.

In the meantime, though, we have this final issue to enjoy. And enjoy it I did. It’s a fitting conclusion for the story of John Constantine, I think, one that not only wraps up the plot and theme of Pete Milligan’s long run, but does the same for the series as a whole. The story and its characters are, at this point, far and away too varied and complex for any sort of detailed plot synopsis, but in brief: Constantine runs one last occult long-con, and just when it looks like the old bastard’s going to get a happy ending… he doesn’t.

Which could, of course, describe pretty much all of the better storylines in the series’ history, but there’s one important difference here: this time, all the right people get hurt, and none of the wrong ones. That’s quite a departure for this book. One of Constantine’s friends often winds up being sacrificed along the way, getting hurt or killed or driven insane. It’s the over-riding theme of John’s life, introduced in the very first issue, and he’s haunted by a virtual graveyard full of ghosts because of it. So when it seems that Our Hero will end his published adventures getting a touchingly intimate hand-job from his beautiful young alchemist wife… He knows that something’s wrong.

And from here on out, things will be getting rather SPOILERY. I’ll continue after the jump, but only make with the clicky if you really don’t mind having even the book’s very last page spoiled for you…

Scarlet Traces

Scarlet 6, by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev

So this came out. It’s been over a year since the last issue Scarlet hit the shelves, and while I was under the impression that Bendis and Maleev had planned a break in-between story arcs, I don’t think it was planned to be THIS long a break. Bendis makes apologies for the delay in the letter column, saying that he was worried about crowd-sourced flash-mob revolutionary violence when the Occupy movement was sweeping the nation. Which… I don’t really care about the lateness so much. As I’ve said before, I’d rather wait for a good funnybook than get a bad one on time. And I suspect the delay had to do with Alex Maleev taking on better-paying corporate spandex work at Marvel (including a failed Moon Knight series with Bendis) as much as anything else.

But that Occupy story is kind of interesting. I remember making the comparison when that whole thing started. While Scarlet is protesting police corruption rather than corporate greed, the visuals (as you can see on the cover above) are frightfully similar. And (because how could he not?) Bendis also puts that similarity to work in the story itself, opening the issue on a black two-page spread featuring nothing but the following speech:

Where have I been? I’ve been planning. Where have YOU been? Oh, that’s right… You’ve been occupying. You’ve been screaming and yelling and carrying on. Living in tents. Jumping in front of cameras and letting the Bad Man have a good old piece of your mind. How did that work out for you? Now that it’s all over and done, and the dust is clear, the grass has grown back, you’re home safe and sound…

I’m not being condescending. I know you meant well. I’m asking you: Did anything change?

No. Nothing changed. Nobody learned a lesson. Nobody paid the price for their greed and corruption. Wall Street is still Wall Street. Corruption is still corrupt. The Big Money people who you were railing against own the airwaves that you were using to rail. They put you on their air and they laughed at you.

I’m saying: You tried your way. Now I’m going to try mine.

It’s a very savvy, very effective opening. It allows Bendis to differentiate between the (ultimately fruitless) peaceful demonstration of the Occupy movement, and the armed revolution that Scarlet’s fomenting. Peace gets you nowhere in our media-drenched plutocracy, Scarlet’s telling us, so it’s time to pick up your gun.

That’s a doubly fantastic opening when you consider Scarlet’s role as an unreliable narrator. Or, well… Not unreliable so much as manipulative. In previous issues, she’s “broken character,” pausing mid-scene to talk to the audience while the action freezes around her. In these breaks, she’s clearly talking to us from some point after the events of the story, and she doesn’t hesitate to manipulate our emotions to get us on her side. And that’s what’s happening here. Because, though the Occupy movement came and went between issues of this series, it’s pretty clear that not very much time has passed since the events of last issue. She takes us to task for not trying harder (whether we occupied anything or not), but does it gently enough that she doesn’t alienate us.

Which is good, because I think Bendis’ control slips a bit later on in the issue. He lets her slide into that cocky smart-ass patois he sometimes falls into for certain kinds of characters. She’s too flippant by half for such an earnest character, and it’s off-putting. When Scarlet and her crew take over a TV news broadcast, for instance, we get this scene:

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Sure, it’s kinda funny, but… It’s not. She’s got a loaded gun pointed at that woman’s head, and she’s cracking wise about morning news puff pieces. Which would be fine in a lighter book, but just seems wrong here. I dunno. Maybe I’m over-reacting. Maybe the earlier scene where she’s bantering with the mayor of Portland to armed accompaniment is worse, and it’s just coloring my opinion. Or maybe it’s that this is going on outside while Scarlet’s cracking wise for the cameras:

(Note that Scarlet letterer Chris Eliopoulos has taken a page from Ken Bruzenak’s SFX work on American Flagg! for this scene. Well, if you’re gonna steal…)

I don’t mean to over-state the problem. I enjoyed the issue quite a bit. But there are places where it feels like Bendis falling back on the cheap Bendis-isms he employs so glibly in his work-for-hire writing, and that’s rubbing me the wrong way in a book whose first five issues were as much about pushing the storytelling envelope as they were about the Glorious Scarlet Revolution.

But thankfully, there’s a bit of envelope-pushing going on here, too. Things switch over to storybook format for the backstory on Scarlet’s new revolutionary companion Isis, for instance, with typeset text accompanying big two-page spread paintings from Maleev. They’re spectacular to look at, and do a nice job of establishing Isis for us. Does this, after all, look like the face of a gun-toting revolutionary?

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Well, it might. If that face then witnesses this happening to her beloved (and innocent) father:

Please, oh please…
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Those aren’t the full spreads up there, by the way. Just massively blown-up details. If my pleadings didn’t move you to do so already, do yourself a favor and embiggen both of them. I like Maleev’s work in general, but he’s really out-done himself here. There’s a light, almost lacy feel to the brushstrokes in the first picture that captures Isis’ youthful innocence perfectly. Then he switches it up to brutally thick lines and queasy colors for the cops’ assault on her father. It’s a stunning transition, and one of the better uses of the double-page spread that I’ve seen in a while.

In fact… Courtesy of Bendis’ Tumblr… Here’s the assault spead in full:

A bit format-destroying, but worth it…

At any rate. While I may have felt that the script let us down a bit in comparison to previous issues, Maleev more than makes up for it. This was a good relaunch for the series, and well-worth my four bucks. Now, let’s just hope they stick with it rather than foist another Moon Knight off on their unsuspecting public…

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before

Green Arrow 17, by Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino

Holy crap this was bad. No, seriously. This comic was just bloody awful. Not, like, Rob Liefeld bad. Not even “Rise of Arsenal” bad. Hell, it’s not even as bad as Ann Nocenti’s first issue on this book from a few months back. It’s just… so… mind-numbingly… disappointingly… bog-standard funnybook bad. But I think I’m getting ahead of myself.

With this issue, DC promised a new direction for the creatively-floundering Green Arrow reboot, under the direction of Jeff Lemire. So I figured I’d give it a try. I mean, I hated his work on the DC Reboot Frankenstein series, and found his Animal Man a bit tiresome. But I’ve really enjoyed all his creator-owned work, and since his series Sweet Tooth just recently wrapped up, I figured… What the hell, right? Maybe this will be the one piece of Jeff Lemire corporate spandex writing that clicks for me.

Ah, well. Chalk another one up to experience. Because what Lemire’s turned in here is just… bleah. It’s every po-faced “everything you know is a lie” funnybook story you’ve ever read, boiled down and condensed into a flavorless jelly. If it had a bit more life to it, I’d swear that it was intended as parody. But, no. It’s just so… Look. Here. Just read this one page:

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Holy crap, right? I didn’t know it was possible to pack so very much leaden, plodding, cliché-ridden dialogue onto a single page. I especially didn’t know that was possible when five of the panels are wordless. Which, I suppose, makes it an innovation of a sort. A triumph of suck.

And it’s not just that the dialogue’s bad. It’s also the worst sort of expository writing, in service to a paint-by-numbers plot. I mean, you’ve got the magnificent bastard of a dead father, the son with the potential he’s never quite lived up to, the devoted mentor who’s raised him in his father’s absence, the hidden legacy the boy’s never been deemed worthy of, the dark secrets that come along with that legacy, and the “nothing is an accident” conspiracy that completes the cliché legacy trifecta. HOW MANY TIMES HAVE WE SEEN THIS SHIT?!

Ahem. Sorry. There are, of course, ways to tell this story that don’t reveal how cliché it is. But none of them involve a page-long info-dump that exposes every pimple on the plot’s ass in glorious infected detail. You’ve gotta back into this crap, give the readers a shocking unexplained event or a cool-ass villain of unknown motives. You need to tease us a little, make it all a tantalizing mystery for us to solve. Then, after a few chapters of complete batshit chaos, you can reveal that everything we know is a lie. If you’re good enough, you can spoon-feed us the same old shit we’ve read a million times before… and make us love it. What happens here is more like a ladle full of castor oil being shoved down our throats.

Of course, fanboys being fanboys, I’m sure there’s a ton of brilliant A-Plus reviews of this thing out there already. BUT I AM HERE TO TELL YOU THAT THOSE REVIEWS ARE WRONG.

Oh. Oh, my. I’m really sorry. I… I don’t know why I’m getting so upset over a comic that’s really only kind of mediocre. It’s that page up there, I think. It’s just so very, very bad that it colors my thoughts on the rest of the issue. Because not only does Lemire (or his editor, maybe) make us suffer through that leaden info-dump, he’s also written it in such a way that it doesn’t actually say anything. Or, well, anything beyond “You are now reading Cliché Action Plot B. Please extinguish all smoking materials and restore your serving tray to a secure upright position.”

Of course, on the other hand, the been-there-done-that feeling only gets stronger as the issue progresses. There is a nice shock (and a welcome respite from bad dialogue) when this happens to Exposition Man…

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…but it’s kind of ruined when the dumbest security team in the world thinks Ollie is somehow responsible, shifting us into “hero on the run from the law” territory. That’s often a close neighbor to “everything you know is a lie” country, of course, but again… How many times have we read this shit before?

Then Our Hero’s secret headquarters blows up…

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…and we learn that he’s being hunted by the archer Komodo…

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…whose name fills in more of our paint-by-numbers funnybook tale by lending the whole sorry mess a vaguely Asian air. By the time the Mysterious New Mentor Figure shows up at the end, Lemire’s used every color in his story’s limited palette, and I am intensely bored.

Honestly, I suppose it’s not that any of this is especially awful. But it is exceedingly bland. Lemire is rightly lauded for his understated style, and it serves him very well on more personal books like Sweet Tooth or Essex County. But married to this kind of action movie storytelling, without the raw creativity and real human drama behind Lemire’s normal work, it falls flat. It feels like he’s just going through the motions, hitting the expected beats of the standard grim-n-gritty spandex reboot, and nothing else.

And that’s doubly bad in my eyes, because Andrea Sorrentino has done such a very good job on the art. While he still has some shortcomings in the storytelling department, his style fits this kind of story perfectly. His people look like real people, he moves the camera around well, and he has a flair for the dramatic capable of capturing the operatic gloom noir super heroics needs. It’s just too bad Lemire hasn’t delivered on that front.

So as I said at the outset… This is mind-numbing, bog-standard funnybooks of a type we’ve all seen, and seen done better, a million times. Told differently, or with a little more sizzle, it might be a lot of fun. But that ain’t the book we got.

It is very pretty, of course. But as wiser men than I have pointed out… Pretty don’t make it right.