*No, it's not another name for the electoral map after Tuesday's presidential election....

I really like to cook. It might surprise you to hear me start off a review of the notoriously gruesome and stomach churning Crimson Plague by mentioning this, but stay with me.

When you're first learning to cook, you can get into the habit of just throwing in everything you find. "Look! Some rosemary! Hey... how about a little nutmeg? Those leftover bits of swordfish will be delish with that corn puree and duck confit!"

The result can be a mishmash of ingredients that overwhelm each other to a point that nothing tastes good anymore. If an amateur can get that overconfident, think of what can happen to a professional let loose with no Executive Chef... er, I mean Editor!

In this light, I suppose I can't be too critical of one of my very favorite comics pros, George Perez. Crimson Plague, in all its Perezian glory, is a gi-normous stinkbomb, but a gi-normous stinkbomb that was clearly a labor of lust. And no, that's not a typo.

To wit: read the comments that Perez wrote at the end of the issue. I'm paraphrasing here, but it seems he met the one hot chick at a comics convention and decided he must create a character based on her—a gal with toxic and highly acidic blood. George, you charmer! I bet you say that to all the girls! Did the rest of them back away slowly and apply for a restraining order, too? I thought so.

This hot chick was just freaky enough (she was at a con, after all) to go along with the idea, and even suggested that our ingenue would be exponentially more deadly when it's arts & crafts week at Panty Camp, if you know what I mean. Insert famous Lucille Ball grimace here.

At this point, I'm sure the greasy-fingered dirty old man in our boy just plain took over, and the end result was Crimson Plague. Which, considering where he could have gone, isn't really so bad. I guess.

I remember reading this thing. I remember not being able to wait to read it! I remember getting to the end of the very first scene and becoming very very worried. The only dialogue in all those pages was the main character saying "I bleed - you die. End of story." Riiiight. What is this? Some Image book? Oh yeah... technically, it is.

The most glaring problem: this book doesn't know what the hell to be! Is it science fiction? Sure! Lookit all the spaceships and guns and technology and stuff! Is it a fantasy book? Totally! See a suit-of-armor-and-sword guy over there? Is it a superhero book? You bet...and here's a team of 15 characters with codenames and costumes to prove it! Titles like Finder can get away with devices like this, but as much as I love him, Perez is no Carla Speed McNeil.

Several more pages in, it was clear I was going to need a legal pad and a pen, because the details came fast and furious. You know how Perez-designed costumes are so very unusual and are sort of the bane of other artists because of all the detail? I'm thinking about Jericho, Troia, Silverclaw - you know... looks that make the inkers and animators cramp up just looking at them. Turns out he writes that way, too! Without an editor to rein this guy in, he adds in every trick in the book to disastrous effect. And I'm not just talking about copious gore.

Buried among the impossible amounts of shrapnel and goopy red carnage on the pages were so many places, plot points, flashbacks and flashbacks-within-flashbacks that my poor brain—which I'll hasten to point out had no trouble absorbing movies like Mulholland Drive, Eyes Wide Shut, and I ♥ Huckabees—was struck apoplectic.

And this is to say nothing of the well over one hundred characters that show up, all with fully distinctive faces and names. Some would laud Perez's efforts in this regard; he apparently liked to honor friends, family and other folks (like, maybe, hot chicks he met at cons) by putting their names and faces in his comics. But did he have to put them ALL in there? He even manages to squeeze in a second cheesecakey main character based on another hot chick he met at a dance school in Orlando! Calling Perez' wife Carol Flynn—it might be time to get out that Starfire costume again.

At first you think you'd better memorize these folks, but so many get 86'ed right off, it's nearly impossible to tell which of the ba-jillion names and physical characteristics you really need to commit to your already bulging memory files. Frankly, it's exhausting (a feeling you Robert Jordan fans know about all too well). Worst of all, Perez brags about it in his commentary at the end of #1, saying the cast is "240 strong!" The readers who bitch about the size of the cast over in the Legion books must have simply plotzed.

The series only lasted two issues—the first issue had at least four different printings, and #2 only came out with #1's re-release under the ill-fated creator-owned imprint Gorilla Comics. I'd go into more detail about what happened in #2 and where the story seemed to be headed, but I think we should all be happy this book seems, for the moment to have died the final, Bucky Barnes-type death.

If there is one thing I learned about George Perez from reading Crimson Plague, it's that he's best left to pretty pretty pictures and the occasional plot. Sure this was a pet project of his borne out of some base urge to get with a girl who would play video games and go to the all-night Dr. Who marathon at the Roxie with him, but that's no real excuse.

Let's face it, we can let slide a lobster on Zatanna's head, but uncounted pages of faces, places and piles of red mush is simply too far. I would have suggested at the time that George go back to "cooking school" to learn how to just leave things out, but smartly, most of his future projects have kept him plating the food instead of choosing from the pantry.

Perhaps, like Dallas Season Eight, and how I hope this year's election turns out to be, we'll someday be able to realize it was all a horrible dream. What's this? A new limited edition hardcover JLA/Avengers is out now? Aaah. That's better.

Kyle Minor lives in San Francisco, and despite being raised in West Virginia and having married an Ohioan, he really did vote for John Kerry. Wish we could say the same for his mother!

All characters and images © 2000 George Perez. Review © 2004 Kyle Minor.

Prism Comics promotes the works of the LGBT community in comics. It does not implicitly endorse any other material or products associated with those works. Any opinions expressed are those of the author(s).