This post feels a little out of place at RAFO. At wotmania, OF was sort of all-inclusive. With certain other forms of media, like movies and such, split off onto their own board, it feels a tad off talking about a comic book amongst all these novels. I'm going to do it anyway.

The comic in question is Avengers: The Initiative #27. It's not a series I'm recommending everyone go out and grab. There's nothing truly You Must Read This about the typical stories told therein. Nevertheless, "Even the Losers" (which I referred to as "The Last Ballad of Johnny Guitar" ) in the first half of this particular issue is worthy of mention.

"Even the Losers" is about the wasted life of Johnny Guitar and his best friend Dr. Sax. They are, and this is being very generous to them, super villains. Johnny and Sax were two typical small town musicians who dreamed of fame and fortune in the music business. Two teenage guys with pregnant girlfriends who couldn't find enough successful gigs to satisfy their budgets or their pride.

To supplement their income, they add robbery to their repertoire. Using high tech instrument-like weapons of destruction (their names are Johnny Guitar and Dr. Sax, I don't have to get more specific about what their weapons looked like), they encounter what is the high point of their lives to that point, fighting the X-Man known as Dazzler. Unfortunately, using musical weaponry against someone who converts sound into light and laser beams resulted in a one-sided butt-whupping.

The preceding is all told in flashback. Present day, they're still a couple of obscure nobodies both in the world of music and in the underworld of supervillainy. But they still both have families to feed and when they find out The Initiative is picking up former supervillains and giving them government paychecks to fight for their country, Johnny Guitar talks his friend into signing up.

Before their first mission, Johnny eavesdrops on a conversation of higher-ups and finds out that the squad they've joined is the expendable first wave in an assault on a prison in the Negative Zone. He and Dr. Sax and a multitude of other Losers are cannon fodder meant to soften up the enemy before the more valuable big guns are sent in. Knowing he'll be "disappeared" if he tries to desert and also that his family will be well-taken care of should he fall in combat, he resolves to continue with the seeming suicide mission.

In order to spare his friend the same fate, Johnny picks a fight with him and injures him severely. Dr. Sax spends the mission safe in the infirmary, even if he doesn't understand why his best friend turned on him before the end. Johnny leaves a journal with Sax containing a message for Johnny's daughter. The entire story has basically been a final message to his daughter, who he knows, with his sacrifice, will be provided for even if her father is never going to be there for her (and he didn't figure he'd be around much anyway).

Perhaps, looking back, the story might seem trite and predictable and nothing special. For some reason though, it really spoke to me. Something about his unfulfilled dreams and how he looked back at his life as an adult and how he'd done so little to improve his station despite his grand dreams and perhaps because he had nothing solid or sustainable to fall back on. I really felt for his lack of pride at his personal accomplishment and his inability to provide a comfortable life for his family. I must compliment the writer (Christos Gage) for making me care about a complete throwaway less-than-B-grade character like Johnny Guitar.

The other half of the issue tells of the actual assault on the prison and while you do see the rest of the Losers discover their expendability as they're picked off one by one and reinforcements never arrive, it doesn't hold the same impact as the first chapter.

While I'm on the subject of noteworthy issues of comics, I'd also suggest Amazing Spider-Man #603. Spider-Man doesn't actually feature in it. Instead we see the Chameleon posing as Peter Parker. It's actually a very unique perspective on Peter Parker's life as you see it lived by someone who has no idea Peter is also Spider-Man. Some oddities include him sleeping with Peter's roommate and mocking the disabled Iraq War veteran who bullied Peter in high school.