I started to post this in the "Pick of the Week" thread, but seeing as how this isn't my Pick, and it will contain spoilers, I decided to just start a separate thread...
It came right after my Pick of the Week, which was Brigg's Land Lone Wolves #2...
Interestingly enough, this morning I read Calexit #1. On its surface, this should have scratched the same itch as Brigg's Land, because both are about separatist nations (in this case, the entire state of California, and in BL, it's just a patch of land in Upstate New York). I found it to have a major problem, though.
It lifted the entire beginning of the movie Inglorioius Bastards. Evidently he wasn't trying to hide it (heck, the "bad guy" character even drank milk during the inquisition!), but I found this to be really weak. It's not like they just alluded to it; they just stole it.
This reminded me of when Brian Michael Bendis stole that scene out of Waiting for Superman during his run that introduced Miles Morales. He said he was moved by that scene, but there are certainly ways a creative type could have worked in the same ideas without having to copy it so directly and unabashedly. He actually got really indignant that anyone dared to call him out on it, saying, "I told you I was moved by that scene! You should have expected it!" No, really, we shouldn't have expected you to lift the scene.
That said, there is one engaging character in the courier. The villain--I'll just go ahead and call him Hans Landa--is pretty much a cartoon. He evades an onslaught of bullets while all of his armored guards surrounding him are taken down. He rides around in a car with Steve Bannon (with a different name) and searches for a mysterious girl who was adopted by a family, but now the family is all dead (thanks to Hans Landa and Steve Bannon and their Stormtrooper goons) and this girl who as adopted and then un-adopted when the laws changed is really important for some reason.
I am not offended by this book at all--I'm all for anything that makes fun of the Right--but I just think it could have been done with a bit more finesse.
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