Gambit.
Kind of moving away from heroes here, but Spider Jerusalem not only smoked but used various drugs constantly. Of course, as he’s only the slightest bit differentiated from Hunter S. Thompson, it’s not surprising…*
[spoiler]But leads to a great scene where he’s suckered into coming into his editor’s office by a headless boy claiming to be his son and when he arrives, he throws the boy out the window. The boy explodes and Spider recounts that it’s really a robot assassain sent by the French in response to some columns he wrote years ago. It’s headless because Spider tried to destroy it in the past.
The editor’s line is something to the effect of, “well, with the amount of drugs you’ve taken, it’s CONCEIVABLE that you could have created a child with no head.”
I got the line wrong, but it’s absolutely hilarious.[/spoiler]
- Of course, he has some “anti-cancer traits” (basically pharmacutical genes) he takes to avoid repercussions.
Bringing us back on topic:
Astonishing X-Men, vol. 1 – I’d never have picked this up were it not penned by Joss Whedon; after New X-Men I figured that everything that could be said had been said. Turns out I was right. It took me an issue or two to acclimate myself to the fact that this book could still be worth a read even though it’ll never even try to scale the heights New X-Men achieved. Once I got to that point, though, I found it perfectly enjoyable, in large part, of course, due to Whedon’s sublime ear for dialogue.
Trigger #1 – Man, did I love Jason Hall’s Beware the Creeper, but can Hall do something as good without the gorgeous pencils of Cliff Chiang on his side? So far Trigger isn’t demanding I take notice, but it’s at least well executed. The plot twist at the end of the first issue is both predictable and pedestrian and I’d rather we’d gotten there on page three instead of 22, but the rest is enjoyable enough and Hall has shown me that he doesn’t always follow predictable direction; there’s no doubt I’ll be getting the next issue.
–Cliffy