Malibu Comics was a short-lived imprint in the 1990s that acted as a sort of comic book Drain Trap — a stagnant place you could dump your worst ideas to keep them from rising up and poisoning the rest of the industry. If Marvel was the appealing picture of the Whopper on the Burger King menu, Malibu was the soggy slab of gray meatpoison you actually got. And Exiles was the caustic grease at the bottom of the bag that ruins your pants.
Thatâs seriously the cover of their very first issue. Thatâs the first impression they were comfortable with for the whole series. I promise I didnât photoshop that mouth — thatâs really something Malibu drew on purpose, looked at, somehow did not destroy out of reflexive shame, and then actually had the gall to put up for sale. Hereâs the very first page:
Weâre not one full page into, again, the very first issue of a brand new series, and we have multiple redirect arrows. Redirect arrows are how normal comic book artists apologize for coming to work drunk. In Japanese comics, theyâre widely regarded as an acceptable suicide note. This is a worse first impression than going on a blind date in blackface and then explaining that itâs not what it looks like — you just have âJungle Feverâ and you jerked off to a mirror earlier.
In keeping with the theme so far, the very first character weâre introduced to, Amber Hunt, is immediately established as a vapid dipshit that we should all hate. Sure hope the whole book doesnât hinge on this horribly sexist caricature doing or saying literally anything els–
Well, shit.
Amber Hunt is our protagonist.
So Malibu comics wants us to know three things right from the jump: Our heroine is stupid, our heroine is self-centered, and theyâre sorry for being repetitive when they could have just said âsheâs a woman in a Malibu comic.â
That grocery store toy aisle âIron Guyâ up there is Supreme Soviet and those are his Cybernoids. âSupreme Soviet and the Cybernoidsâ is a kickass name for a Russian Daft Punk cover band, but theyâre terrible names for comic book characters. They sound like Honorable Mentions pulled from a Dr. Who name-the-villain contest, but donât worry — those arenât your main villains.
Do worry, your main villains are stupider. Like Bloodbath:
Whoâs a ripoff of every single Wolverine ripoff, and looks like Dr. Frankenstein tried to build Dave Bautista out of Rob Liefield parts. He looks like somebody tried to break the Character Creation screen. He has a fishhook tattooed on his face though heâs in no way nautically themed, and he couldnât decide between skullwings and Pippi Longstocking braids so he told his barber both and hung strong through the laughter. Heâs trying to pull the old Reality Show âIâm not here to make friendsâ gambit, but itâs definitely coming across as âI wore sweatpants to the prom because I knew nobody wanted to dance with me anyway.â
Hey, meet the only character in this entire series that I like:
Her name is Hot Rox. Have you guessed her power? Itâs elocution.
Our heroes are no better!
Everyone in the Exiles sucks so hard itâs difficult to overstate. Iâll try: They suck so hard, if they were an album theyâd be Imagine Dragons ironically covering NWA songs. They suck so hard, if they were a car theyâd be a brown Nissan Juke. Itâs not enough! Theyâd be a Nissan Juke with one of those family stickers in the window, only every member would be a Calvin peeing on a smaller Calvin until the final Calvin, who has to pee on himself. They suck so hard, if they were a sex scandal theyâd be Martin Shkreli caught masturbating in a Foot Locker. Fuck! Nothing is landing. Youâll just have to meet them.
This is Tinsel. Thatâs seriously her comic book name, and this is seriously her comic book power.
Malibu ripped off Jubilee and Dazzler, two characters nobody wanted, and found a way to make the combination of them worse. Thatâs like pairing hot pickles and warm oatmilk, only you put the warm oatmilk inside the pickle like a briny gusher so it can ejaculate into your mouth when you bite it. You were wrong from the start, and every step you took afterward made it exponentially worse.
The rest of your crew are:
Mustang!
Shitty Gambit got to design his own superhero persona and the toughest thing he could think of was to wear boxing safety headgear and name himself after a powerful horse.
Ghoul is the zombified corpse of that art teacher who constantly jokes about smoking weed. Itâs strange how all of his most talented students are young women who look like they can keep a secret. Itâs even stranger that his âafter hours intensive portfolio reviewâ always takes place in his Volkswagen Jetta.
Catapult is our Michaelangelo character, three years after we as a culture accepted that not everything had to have Michaelangelo character. He has none of the charm or self-awareness of Michaelangelo and twice the quips, but the writer was not legally allowed to be around actual teenagers, knew no actual âhipâ slang himself, and was also quite unwilling to look any up.
This is Deadeye:
Deadeye is, without question, the most useful member of Team Exile. Deadeyeâs superpower is that he has a gun and can aim it.
Aaaand we saved the worst for last. That is Trax, who pulled his superhero name from an orthopedic hiking insole. Hereâs Trax after taking a glancing blow from Super Soviet:
Later in the comic, itâs revealed that Super Soviet actually had no superpowers of his own. That was Trax after taking one medium human punch.
Traxâs only superpower seems to be smelling women from a greater distance than normally possible, or advisable:
To the surprise of nobody, heâs a sex pest:
That reprimand almost seems progressive, doesnât it? Donât worry, this is a Malibu comic. Female brains just take extra time to understand good jokes, math, and complimentary groping. That woman has time to think about it later and realizes she was wrong:
But hey, speaking of good jokes — whereâs that choice Malibu âyour friend that canât quite do a Chandler impressionâ humor?
The wall of his classroom just exploded, so that kid turned around to ask nobody if they thought the flames would be on the test, which you might almost recognize as a joke before your female brain took that extra time and realized you were horribly mistaken. Itâs kind of like following a strange adult you think is your mom only to look up half a block away and realize itâs a circus clown. That moment of dull, confused horror is the closest thing to a laugh a Malibu comic has ever gotten.
Now that weâve met the colorful cast, letâs jump into the plot: Amber Hunt has latent superpowers, and is drawn reluctantly to the Exiles Team. Just in time, too, since a sinister corporation might be making their own superpowered army! The heroes go in to investigate, but find theyâve stumbled into an ambush.
Thatâs a pretty generic setup, but maybe they go somewhere interesting with it?
Oh wait, thatâs actually the ending.
The Exiles scout out Evil Headquarters and Ghoul has all the bad guys cornered… then decides to fucking 180 noscope some fuel tanks, killing everybody:
Meanwhile back at the Exile base, it also explodes, killing… everybody else?
This has been an accurate synopsis of the entire Exiles series.
The end.
What, did you expect something more?
The writers knew you would!
So they put in one last panel just verifying that you were an idiot for expecting that.
Exiles lasts four issues, does nothing interesting, and then they all die abruptly. Thatâs the worst ending you could possi-
Oh wait, Iâm sorry, I didnât turn the page. Thatâs not the end! Thereâs an epilogue⌠in the form of a written apology from the Exiles team.
In which they explain why they wrote a bunch of characters who exist solely to suck and then die. The answer is: Some people just suck and then die.
They wrap it up by further acknowledging that you, the reader, probably wonât like this story, but thatâs only because they donât know what theyâre doing.
Although I gotta say, âDrunken Magicianâ is a killer euphemism for âincompetent fuckwit.â Iâm going to change all of my business cards.
