comics -- reckless camera angles abound in Flex , as do panels that bleed pointlessly to the book's edge, millions of wispy details, and characters who mug and pose rather than live their lives on the page. That said, the art is one of the only things to recommend the comic. The character design is sometimes inspired -- the drippy, tacky Waxworker is a sight -- while Quitely's vaunted ability to depict trumpery, fabric, and flesh as tactile objects does manifest itself on occasion. As Flex, for example, descends into a superhero orgy, in one of the book's most ill-considered developments, the artist abstracts the scene into a closely cropped image of faceless limbs and skin impossibly entwined, a panel that is suggestive and unexpected in its reticence. Too bad that the script, characteristically, robs the art of its accomplishment and poetry, pasting over it a humdrum evocation of superhero fetishism: "Imagine vampire amazons in wetlook thongs... a shy secretary stripping down to her black vinyl costume... gunsmoke and spent caps and Multiboy in his new fucking costume!" I'd really rather not imagine all that, thanks. Such notions were infused with more scandal and panache when the Tijuana Bibles first trotted them out a lifetime ago. But the scripting problems aren't limited to the bankruptcy of the ideas dropped here and there like so many rabbit pellets -- even the overarching structure, so impressive from a distance, is fundamentally corrupt. Consider the book's principle of organization once more, where Morrison