The Phantom Stranger #8

Why do these guys give any fucks about Phantom Stranger?

As you can see from the cover, last issue Phantom Stranger was stabbed through the chest by Terrence Thirteen using the Spear of Destiny. Or maybe just a normal spear he kept in the umbrella stand by the door. Now he's dead or dying and Frankenstein is terribly upset about it. Perhaps this whole thing is reminding him of a particularly heart wrenching poem. I'm a Writer not a Reader or else I might suggest what poems he could possibly be thinking about. The only poems I know are the ones about the baby that falls out of the tree and the horny woman that kissed a snake because she went up the wrong stairs. That one might also involve monkeys jumping on a bed. They both definitely end in needing doctors, anyway.

The issue begins with the cover. The House of Mystery must be a mystical ambulance. It rushed the EMTs (Extremely Mystical Technicians) to the scene to try and save The Phantom Stranger's life. Since his name is on the cover, I'm going to go out on a baby dropping limb and say they save him.

This issue probably takes place before the current story arc in Justice League Dark because Constantine still has the House of Mystery and Black Orchid is on the team. She may still be on the team in the current Doctor Destiny story but she was nowhere to be seen last issue. Unless she had shapechanged and I just didn't recognize her.

Frankenstein mentions that The Phantom Stranger was left on the doorstep of The House of Mystery. Like Moses! Or was that Jesus's origin? Maybe I'm thinking of Leela. Anyway, John Constantine quickly prepares a table for surgery. The kitchen table.

I'm trying really hard not to comment on Zatanna's ass. Whoops.

Deadman begins performing mystic surgery and declares that the patient's soul is missing. Boston Brand is a hack! I'd sue my doctor if he came up with this diagnosis because I don't think insurance covers soul recoveries! And I'm not paying out of pocket just so some stupid physical body can once again be blessed with my amazing and racially sensitive mind! Stupid body. How could it go and lose a soul anyway? Careless.

While Justice League Dark operates/makes lunch, The Phantom Stranger is off in some mystic halfway house manned by a flame-headed psychotherapist (psycho the rapist) that tries to trick newcomers into judging and damning themselves.

He doesn't fall for it. Yet. He has at least half a comic book left to fall for the trick.

With the right prodding and prying and mention of Philip Stark's family, The Phantom Stranger begins to unintentionally spill his gut beans. The creature opposite him reveals that his stupid name is The Sin Eater! His power? He sees sins! So shouldn't he be The Sin Seer? Maybe he eats them up after seeing them. I would never call myself The Cupcake Seer when I know that any cupcake I see, I'm going to fucking eat anyway.

Turns out The Sin Eater doesn't need The Phantom Stranger to confess. This was all just melodramatic baloney to set the stage for The Sin Eater's reveal showing just what a gigantic asshole The Phantom Stranger truly is.

I knew he was just pretending to love his family! Just like every other father in the world!

I think it was in my commentary for Detective Comics #20 where I said that everything comes back to Daddy Issues. I'm beginning to suspect that fathers aren't fucking necessary and they're actually destructive to people's lives! Our culture has an ideal father figure that few men live up to. Perhaps we should just drop the ideal and remove fathers from the equation altogether! Even the decent ones that stick around wind up resenting their children and wives! Perhaps it would just be easier to begin teaching children that men aren't meant to help raise children and then nobody grows up with an unfulfilled expectation of a loving and caring father! I think the Cirinists in Cerebus had it completely right! Just send the drunk, arrestedly developed, immature sperm carriers into Testosterone Ghettos where they can masturbate and drink to their hearts content! This would solve everything and not cause any problems whatsoever! If you argue against my genius plan, you probably have Daddy Issues due to unfulfilled patriarchal expectations!

I bet if I asked you what profession is filled with people with the most Daddy Issues, you'd guess Stripper. But you'd be wrong. It's Politicians tied with CEOs. These people only become overly ambitious and power hungry because they need to prove to their fathers that they aren't gigantic failures. Strippers are just trying to get through college. Everybody knows that.

Back in the House of Surgery, the doctors are suggesting their options.

Not a specialist! You know how much this is going to end up costing?!

Oh! You want to see the specialist?

Okay. I'd pay extra for that.

I'm actually rather surprised that this whole story has turned into the very thing I was joking it was earlier, The House of Surgery's Extremely Mystical Technicians. The way they're discussing The Nightmare Nurse, it seems perhaps she appeared previously sometime in the Preboot Universe. Maybe Constantine has a history with her. I mean, maybe Zatanna has a history with her. I mean, maybe The House of Mystery has a history with her. I don't know. I have a feeling she'd fuck all three.

Getting back to The Sin Eater's interrogation of The Phantom Stranger, The Stranger explains that he was a better husband and father to Philip's family than Philip was. Mostly because Philip was a serial killer. Well, that's kind of judgmental.

This seems more like a job for The Specter. I guess The Stranger did The Specter's vengeance job until The Stranger created that job opening by killing Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth.

So The Phantom Stranger killed Philip Stark and took his love for his family. I wonder why he didn't begin calling himself Emperor Philip? Speaking of Ogilvy who had Daddy Issues as big as Batman's, how many characters in this comic book now have serious Daddy Issues? Now these issues don't have to stem from the things a father specifically did to a child! They can also simply be things that affected Daddy's life that continue to have some kind of control over the child's life. So we have Frankenstein. That's pretty fucking obvious, right?! And Zatanna, whose father was killed and she's desperate to figure out who did it. I don't know, specifically, about The Phantom Stranger's father but since all of his issues deal with Jesus Christ...well, you don't have to hit me over the head twice with that metaphorical crucifix. Terrance Thirteen is seriously trying to fill his great grandfather's rationally skeptical shoes, so he's another one. But I don't know (or remember, perhaps) anything about the fathers of either Constantine or Brand.

I bet John Constantine is driven more by Mommy Issues anyway.

Speaking of Constantine and his Mommy Issues:

There were too many good moments on this page so I had to scan the whole thing.

Speaking of serious Mommy and Daddy Issues, I can't wait until the next episode of Mad Men on Sunday! That Don Draper is seriously fucked up. I haven't had cable television for over ten years but I purchase Mad Men and Walking Dead over Xbox Live because, well, so good. Mad Men much more so than Walking Dead but the production values on both shows should be revolutionizing free television*.

*"Free" only in the sense that they aren't a Subscription Channel like HBO and Showtime and that one that shows porn. Does that one even still exist?

Speaking of channels that show porn, back in the early eighties there was a UHF channel in the San Francisco Bay Area called "Private Screenings". It came in scrambled but not that well. So as a young, mixed-up lad, I would watch mixed up couples fucking over normal airwaves. I think they were fucking. They could have been two men wrestling. Or sheep being sheared. Imagination played a large part in our pornography in the seventies and early eighties. Eventually, many people began getting Cable in their homes with at least Showtime or HBO. And then it was just a matter of finding Excalibur or Conan or Quest for Fire on air when the parents were out of the house.

Back to The House of Surgery, The Nightmare Nurse summons her box of medical tools and they fly around the room like a monster summoned in a Yu-gi-oh card duel. That will probably save him. Or do 3000 points of damage.

Meanwhile The Phantom Stranger is busy learning that the secret identity of The Sin Eater is Philip Stark himself! He reformed after The Phantom Stranger dissipated his essence across the universe and now he's back for revenge! The first step of his plan was kidnapping The Phantom Stranger's family. The second step of the plan was crucifying the baby sitter. The third step of the plan was deflating all of their soccer balls. The fourth step of the plan was getting The Question to get Terrence Thirteen to stab The Phantom Stranger with The Spear of Destiny (aka The Lance of Longinus although I've never liked that name much. The Spear of Longinus I don't mind. But if I'm already saying "The Spear", I tend to just finish up with "of Destiny"! Also, why has every power hungry madman throughout history been so concerned with finding artifacts covered in Jesus's blood? Wackos!). The fifth step of the plan was to steal The Phantom Stranger's soul. The sixth step of the plan was to lecture The Phantom Stranger for about fifteen pages. The seventh step of the plan was to reveal that he was Philip J. Stark! I don't know what the eighth step of the plan was because I haven't turned the page after the seventh step.

Remember when I mentioned Yu-gi-oh? The Nightmare Nurse sounds like she should be one of his monster cards.

Before the eighth step of the plan can be enacted, The Phantom Stranger attacks The Sin Eater Philip J. Stark. But before The Phantom Stranger can get his hands on The Sin Eater, The Nightmare Nurse and Zatanna bring The Stranger's soul back to his body. But not before The Stranger sees into The Sin Eater's mind and discovers where his family's been hidden away.

The Phantom Stranger #8 Rating: +2 Ranking. I think my Ratings need to be reworked a bit. But I'm hesitant to change them because that just means more work dealing with bullshit that's subjective and arbitrary and barely matters anyway. But The Phantom Stranger has been a really solid comic since its debut and I've got it ranked really fucking low. Seriously, people, it's not bad at all! It's a failure on my part that it seems like it's probably shitty. Anyway, simply for the Nightmare Nurse and John's mention of Doctor Occult as if he's a real doctor (as if The Nightmare Nurse is a real doctor! Come on!), this issue gets a rare +2.