Grifter #16

Hopefully this will all have been a dream while Grifter slept out his lost 19 days in the hibernation tank.

This time it really is the last issue of Grifter! I think I only made it through Issue #15 of Grifter without hanging myself from a ceiling beam simply because I believed it was the last issue of the series. But now I know it's the final issue! It even says "End Run!" right there on the cover which is probably a smart allusion to the end of the series! And also diarrhea.

Poor Midnighter also made the cover. Hasn't he been embarrassed enough by this comic book? Can't Tieri and the awful cover artist just leave him alone? This cover kind of looks like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Which path will Grifter take? YOU DECIDE! I would find the quickest THE END page I could and then throw the book in the garbage.

So last issue Grifter found out that his handler Warick that he only recently discovered existed but decided to completely trust was actually an escaped whacko from an insane asylum. Maybe I have some of those facts wrong but that never stopped me before. In fact, when I try to stick to the facts, I fucking bore myself and write shitty commentaries and then doubt my potential and wonder why the fuck I'm even continuing with this project. I have real fucking things to write over here! It's just I don't have an audience for those real things so I let them sit. What kind of a sell-out am I? Letting the audience decide what I should work on? God, I'm such a coward.

I almost forgot! Grifter found out that Warick was insane from Amanda Waller so it's not like he can trust that information either! But Grifter keeps listening to other people and fighting their wars because they keep calling him the Chosen One and complimenting him and sending him encouraging emails and thanking him for doing the dirty work and...oh my God. I'm fucking Grifter.

So join the military!

The military (not Team 7! That's just more crazy! Just join the run of the mill military if you're looking for a simple, routine, organized life) will provide you with eats and sleeps and drinks! But they'll also provide you with what you're really looking for: no responsibility. Life is so much easier when you don't have to make your own decisions. Everything is planned out for you. You never have to feel like a failure when your daily decisions aren't made by you. Sure, like the lions in your zoo, you may not be exactly free. But people make compromises every day, right? Trade away a little freedom in the physical world and your mind is released of the stress of responsibility. There's a reason people become serial enlistees just like people become serial criminals. Because life is simpler when you're an animal in a zoo.

Okay, joining the military in times of conflict are a little bit more stressful. But you realize it's still less scary to a lot of people than having to negotiate the landscape of "normal" life? It's also more exciting which draws people like you, Grifter! You can't handle the long, endless stretches of boredom that comes with modern societal living. You need the adrenaline rush. But you know, they might not take you in the military since you're a Level 12 Telekinetic. You'd probably get shunted off to Team 8 where life would be anything but simple.

Now that I've managed to portray military life as a much more mundane and far less heroic choice than most people would like to believe it is (I could have gotten much worse and explored the various reasons why most people join the military in the first place, few of them being patriotic while many of them being economic), I should say something like, "Some of my best friends are in the military!" One of those non-imaginary friends in the military used to say, "You have to hand it to the army. They do a whole lot with very little." You know what he's talking about.

Penises.

Back to Grifter, the Charlie Brown music continues to play as he wanders about the zoo thinking back on his sixteen previous horrible issues. He remembers how he was fighting Daemonites and police officers and his brother Max and Green Arrow and The Black Curate and Helspont and Midnighter and the Suicide Squad and maybe more Daemonites. He doesn't remember how he was constantly referred to as the most wanted man on Earth but he never actually was. But then later he decides that he's going to pull a gigantic con where he convinces all of Earth's super heroes that he is the worst super villain ever but that plan doesn't actually go anywhere after a change in writers a major plane crash in Paris. He also doesn't remember how he grabbed the Grifter mask from a Mardi Gras costume stall near the airport but somehow he was already wearing and using it years before when he was a member of Team 7.

Grifter didn't merely come to the zoo to stare enviously at the lions and get lost in nostalgia. He came to meet Warick to learn what this stupid fucking comic has actually been about.

If you wanted a private conversation, why'd you meet in a public place? How long before your private conversation is interrupted by a SWAT team now that you fired off a gun inside the park?

With Grifter waving his gun in Warick's face, Warick gets right into the explicating!

I don't think the Daemonite threat (along with Helspont) have translated very well into the already brimming with cosmic threats DC Universe.

Warick's explanation is as good an explanation as I think Grifter is going to get.

How dare you answer my questions with answers!

Grifter wants answers from Warick and he gets them. But just like every other fucked up person in the world (i.e. all of us), he doesn't want to accept the answers Warick is giving him because they make sense and Grifter just wants to be mad at Warick. How dare Warick not be the jerk Grifter was expecting him to be after Amanda Waller told him the real truth!

Grifter decides he's done fighting Daemonites and Helsponts and Midnighters but Warick has a difference of opinion.

How do you interrupt somebody in the middle of the "GH" sound of laugh?

Here's why both Grifter and Warick are idiots (although Warick might not be so much an idiot as a genius who understands how the idiot Grifter will react). Warick wants Grifter's help so he punches him and runs away. Grifter doesn't want to help Warick so he pulls out his guns and begins chasing him. Hey, Grifter? Buddy? If you don't want anything to do with him, walk away! Warick just left. Just go away and insta-travel to another part of the globe like you've been doing all year. Be done with it! Don't get sucked in! Don't chase him! Aww shit. There he goes into the reptile house!

Oh fuck me in the hole I just made in my chest stabbing myself with a pair of scissors out of rage, Tieri! You just used that fucking line last issue! LAST GODDAMN ISSUE! I guess Cole thought it was the best line he'd ever heard and stole it from Harley.

And now that Grifter is in the Reptile House, Tieri knows the best way to make this book exciting! Crocodile fight! It's just as stupid as it sounds when you just put an exclamation point after the words "crocodile" and "fight." The crocodile gets killed due to their bullshit and then the fight boils over to the top of a lion's cage.


If you think my recounting of events doesn't make much sense and is skipping over a lot of detail, you'd be wrong. This time, anyway. Usually you'd be right. But this happens across three pages. You're not missing out on any good dialogue either. Unless you think "Thrown plenty of men, though" is the height of literature.

Why do Grifter's fights go anywhere past this point? This is all that should ever happen.

Really punching yourself in the face is one of those rare treats that most people will never experience because it's really, really fucking hard to do. No matter how much you want to, you're going to pull the punch somewhat out of your own hesitancy and self-preservation. And why would you do it in the first place? I have punched myself in the face though. Really, really hard. And I surprised myself when I did it! I sucker punched myself! I was in the passenger seat of a friend's convertible BMW down in Los Angeles stalking Arnold Schwarzenegger. This friend, Josh, drove like a maniac. Everyone was singing along to shitty rock music when Josh decided he didn't want to go straight anymore at sixty miles per hour. He wanted to turn right! So he screeches to the right and I throw up my hand to grab the outside roof of the car to keep me from sliding into Josh as he peeled around the corner. And since there was no roof, I punched myself in the side of the face with the fist my hand had become when it encountered no roof to grab. It sucked. Luckily, I'm a gigantic wuss and don't punch very hard, so my face simply hurt instead of breaking my nose or blacking my eye.

This fist fight occurs on top of the lion's cage which means that just on the other side of the cage is a pit of polar bears. Grifter threatens to drop Warick in amongst the Polar Bears unless Warick lets this comic book end. At this point, I suppose I don't give a shit what happens. It's not like Warick is much of a character. He may have been somebody in the Wildstorm Universe or he might have been created in Grifter #0. If he died here, it wouldn't bother me any. As long as this fucking comic book is done.

This is the point where Waller shows up with a bunch of non-super powered men with guns. I'm sick of Waller having command of Task Force X and multiple other resources but she continues to lead missions. This is what happens when you make her a skinny badass with a gun. Now she's no longer an administrator that kicks ass and takes lunch orders. She has to be hands on in everything she does. It really just seems to go against the kind of self-preservation I thought Amanda Waller was full of.
Amanda Waller followed Grifter to get her hands on Warick. She's been hunting him for years apparently. And since Warick doesn't want to end up in jail, he pushes himself off of Grifter and into the Polar Bear pit. Where the apathetic zoo polar bears subsequently ignore him.

Ha ha! No, no. Just kidding. He's dead.

Grifter laments not being quick enough to save Warick as he fell the twenty feet into the Polar Bear Sanctuary. Even though Grifter can generally stop bullets with his telekinesis and turn flames away as they're shot at him. I'm pretty sure Grifter didn't give a fuck but also wants to rationalize away the manslaughter aspects of what just happened. Just in case Waller wants to, you know, "arrest" him.

It turns out Grifter was telling this Zoo Story to his brother Max's grave. And even after all that Grifter has seen, he apparently didn't believe any of it until Warick threw his life away to become a main course that pairs well Coke. Cole can't believe somebody would die for their beliefs! Even if that guy was a paranoid schizophrenic? Cole even says, "Crazy or not...it moved me." Really? You won't take into consideration that his craziness is the reason he killed himself? Instead you're going to only look at how well he believed something? Chosen One my ass.

Cole decides to retire from the Grifter persona for awhile. Hopefully a long while. Although I think he'll be back in Justice League America, won't he? Am I mistaken on that point? Whatever. At least he'll have a new creative team pulling his strings. That's all I can really ask for.

Helspont is watching this entire thing. He's happy Warick is dead and is planning on letting Grifter live for now since Helspont won't have anything to do with Justice League America if Geoff Johns can help it. And he can since he pretty much runs things at DC! Helspont also reveals that the Daemonite cloning chamber where Warick was created was underneath the zoo (wherever this zoo was located. It was never mentioned). Wasn't there a mad scientist creating anthropomorphic zoo creatures in the pages of OMAC? Could this be the same place run by the same scientist who was actually a Daemonite but that wasn't revealed since it wasn't important to that story? Or is basement real estate under zoos just really cheap property?

And guess how this comic book ends? No, really! Guess! Oh, come on!

It better fucking be.

Grifter #16 Rating: -1 Ranking. Fuck you, Grifter! I can drop you to Rank #52 for your retirement number and STILL keep The Savage Hawkman at the bottom of the list! Ah ha ha ha ha!